


Little Moment: The Sorceress and The Knight

by Ericobard



Series: Little Moments Universe [1]
Category: Ben 10 Series
Genre: A Sidestory of Unknown Provenance, Atlantis is not a good place, Bezel Deserves Better Than Omniverse, Bezel was a Woman and You Can Get Over It, Blink and you'll miss it, Break Out the Tissues Motherfuckers, F/M, Fantastic Racism, Greek Tragedy Gots Nothing On Me, Little Moments Sidestory, Magic Exults In Life, Mythology was Kind of True, Omniverse can Kiss My Ass, Only the Original Series Counts, Speed Readers' Mileage May Vary, Too Smart For Reddit, ancient aliens - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-27
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2020-05-20 19:52:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 182,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19383601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ericobard/pseuds/Ericobard
Summary: A long time ago, when Magic was everywhere, there was a land called Atlantis that protected the Earth, ruled by a Mage King who had many sons, and only one daughter.Her name was Bezel. And she would change the world.





	1. Prologue: Her Name Was Bezel

**Author's Note:**

> Two years ago, roughly, I wrote "Stone In The River" to link together the episode Ben 10,000 and the start of Shadows59's Little Moments series. As a part of it, I revealed a glimpse into the ancient past, of a Cold War between Atlantis and Logos, the superpowers of an Earth where magic was abundant, and how one last desperate gambit by a hybrid Coven of both societies tried to prevent the final war and failed. And a little was spoken of Bezel, the greatest Artificer of his time.
> 
> Funny how everyone thinks that Bezel had to be a man. Thousands of years of historical drift...and the gender changes. 
> 
> I decided there was still a story to tell, regarding Bezel, the Charms, and the War that sundered Atlantis and sent the last surviving Logosians fleeing for Legerdomain. So, with Shadows59's tacit approval...  
> Follow me down the rabbit hole once more.

**_Little Moment: The Sorceress And the Knight_ **

By Eric ‘Erico’ Lawson

* * *

 

**Prologue: Her Name Was Bezel**

 

_ Once Upon A Time, In an Age of Wonders… _

  
  


The world of Terra existed on the fringe of the galaxy, and was avoided or ignored by almost all the other strange-looking travelers from the stars, who spoke with a thousand tongues and wore a thousand shapes. When they came, they almost always walked lightly, came with deference in their hearts, and usually left in a hurry. They had reason to be fearful. Terra was _protected_. The whole of the world was watched over by the vigilance of the guardians who hailed from the great, artificial continent of Atlantis, a flying, enspelled landmass that sailed through the world’s skies. 

Terra was a world of magic, and Atlantis reigned as its guiding light. 

 

That was what everyone _said_ , but the dark-haired boy who sat in the park by the pond while his mother watched from nearby wondered about that. If Atlantis was really so wonderful, why was his mom always working? Why, when she had time to play with him, were they only able to visit places that were free? What was so wonderful when he could see the worry that always pinched at her eyes, that her smiles and distracting laugh never quite covered up? He glanced back at her for a second, and saw her slumped on the bench, her eyes closed. It made him feel worse, made him ignore the hunger in his belly for a little bit more. She was so tired. She lied about it to make him feel better, to keep him focused. But he was never focused. He wanted to make it _right_. 

But he couldn’t. He was a child, as everybody who bothered to talk to him always said. Some said it in pity, others with scorn. And what could a  _ child _ do to change anything? 

 

“You okay?” A girl’s voice cut into his bitter fuming, and he jerked his head up in surprise, whirling around to the source. He froze when piercing green eyes, open with concern and honest curiosity, pinned him to the spot. It took him a second to remember to breathe.

It wasn’t until she frowned and poked at his forehead that he remembered how to move, scooting back away from her with a noise of surprise. “What are you doing?!” He yelped softly.

Back farther away from the girl with green eyes that sparkled like wet grass in the morning, he was able to pay attention to the rest of her. She had been crouched next to him, and her clothes were much finer than his; she was clearly of a higher caste. Was he even  _ allowed _ to be next to her? Sure, the castes weren’t separated by  _ law _ , but his mother had always warned him to not stare at those above their station. To not talk to them unless they spoke to you first. 

Mostly, though, he stared at her plaited red hair that hung to her shoulders; red like a fire, not dull like the color of blood or rust. For a moment he wondered if it was soft as it looked, and he reached up into his own messy dark hair, clean but coarse. 

The girl pouted and stood back up, dusting off her skirt. “You looked sad and angry.” She explained. “Why?”

He should have gone back to his mother then. He should have walked away from this crazy little girl with the big curious eyes. He didn’t. 

“Just worried.” He muttered. “S’not fair.”

“What isn’t?” She pressed him, tilting her head to the side.

And what was a good answer to that question? What would sum it all up?

He waved a hand around them, encompassing the whole of his world, and let out a grunt.

Maybe she understood. More than likely, she didn’t. 

She had a leather satchel on a strap over one shoulder, and it bounced lightly off of her waist. “Wanna help me feed the ducks?” She asked him brightly, and dug out a paper bag full of torn bread chunks, with a little clear window in the side that let him see them. 

His stomach growled loudly at the sight of so much food, and he winced when he saw her blink in surprise. He turned away from her.

There was the sound of her digging through her satchel again, and then something cool touched his shoulder; an apple, he realized, when he turned to it. It was  _ enormous _ , and cold, and so bright and crispy looking without a blemish on it.

“Here.” She said, smiling at him. “You can have it.” He stared between the fruit that was so much more delicious than anything he’d ever seen in his life and the girl with hair like fire and eyes like grass, and took it from her. Hunger won out, and he practically  _ inhaled it _ . 

It was only after he’d finished it down to the core and stem that she giggled that he remembered to feel embarrassed. “Thanks.” He said through his blush.

“You’re welcome.” She told him. “ _ Now _ you wanna help me feed the ducks?”

“Okay.” He said, because for as nice as she’d been to him, he probably owed her a favor. And feeding the animals that coasted out on the pond? Well, if that’s what she wanted…

 

They sat by the water’s edge with the bag between them, tossing out bread crusts and even pieces of the softer interior into the water. The fowl quacked and came in closer, out of reach but close enough to grab and tear at the nourishment they were being freely given. He snuck a piece for himself every so often as well, because even the apple hadn’t touched the bottomless pit of his stomach. She caught him doing it, but she never said a word. She just smiled at him. He felt the need to explain anyways.

“I’m hungry.”

“Doesn’t your daddy feed you enough?”

“I don’t have a dad.” He said. “But mom tries. She works a lot.”

“I don’t have a mom.” The girl looked away sadly. “Is she nice?”

“Yeah.” He plucked out another handful of bread chunks and stared at it for a moment before offering one to her. She got a squinty look in her eye, like she was trying to figure out if it was okay to eat it or not, but she finally gave in and popped it in her mouth. She seemed to get more enjoyment out of how naughty she thought it was than how it tasted. “I mean, I take care of myself a lot. And sometimes she sings for me. She would sing a lot when I was younger.” He gestured up behind them, and the girl gasped to see his mother sleeping on the park bench.

“She’s pretty!” The girl whispered, as if them talking in a normal voice might wake her up even at a distance. “Why is she sleeping?”

“She’s tired.” The boy said, and when the girl got confused, he explained. “She works all the time.” He shrugged, knowing that it was a part of life. It wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t right, but…

But it was. And he couldn’t change it, no matter how mad he got. His mom was always telling him to stop getting so angry about the things he couldn’t change.

The lesson didn’t always stick.

 

“It’s not right.” The girl pouted. “What if she wanted to play with you? What if you wanted to play with her?”

He shrugged, but he didn’t look away from the girl, who was scowling now. He could see it in her eyes; she knew it wasn’t right, either. But there was something about her that  _ burned _ at it. Like she thought it was wrong, sure, but that she could  _ change it _ . 

What could he say to her? She ended up picking up the bag of bread pieces and dumping the rest out onto the pond all at once, then she stood up and held out a hand to him. “I’ll play with you, then.”

He blinked. “You will? But...but I’m not…”

“You’re not what?”

He pulled at his faded shirt, then gestured to her much nicer clothes, made from nicer fabric, which didn’t look like it had been washed and reused and patched up over and over again. “We’re different.” He said, because even if she was just a  _ girl _ , she should have understood this much about the world, that her kind didn’t associate with his. 

 

But she didn’t understand it, or she didn’t care. She scowled again and grabbed at his hand, tugging ineffectively until he finally surrendered and stood up, balancing her so she didn’t fall backwards.

“We’re  _ not _ different.” She insisted, with the weight of stubborn finality. 

He blinked a few times, grinned. “Wanna play tag?”

It turned out she did, and they kept chasing after each other after that, laughing and screaming when one got close enough to the other to reach a hand out and smack them in the arm or on the back. And once, when he stopped running after that, she tried tickling him.

He proved to be a lot better at it, as she started shrieking with wild laughs, trying to squirm out of his grip and failing at it. She only stopped when a loud shouting voice got close enough to be heard, and then her face went shock white. He stopped tickling her, wondering what was wrong.

 

“Princess!” Along the path through the park came a middle-aged woman with worry lines streaking across her face. She’d seen them and was charging as fast as she could, and from behind, the boy winced when he heard his mother shouting his name as well. 

The boy and the girl could do nothing but wait as the women came racing towards them, but while they separated, she kept hold of his hand and refused to let go. He didn’t know why, but he stayed put and managed to not be afraid. But his head was swimming. 

_ Princess? _

 

The older woman came to a stop in front of them, panting and livid. “Princess Bezel, you  _ cannot _ go running off like that!” She admonished the little girl, and at the sound of her name, the boy jerked his head to the side and stared at her in shock.

_ Princess  _ **_Bezel?_ ** __

 

Merciful mana, he had been playing with the youngest daughter of the  _ Mage King _ . They would punish him for this. They would hurt his mother. They would throw them in prison, or…

But Bezel, undaunted in the face of the woman, stepped in front of him protectively, never letting go of his hand. “I’m fine!” She snapped in her high voice. “We were just playing!”

 

The older woman scowled again, and looked past the children. The boy knew she was staring at his mother, because not a second later…

“Forgive us.” He shut his eyes, because he could hear her settle into the grass. She was  _ kneeling _ . “My son, he was…”

“He should  _ know better _ than to associate with one so high above his station.” The other woman growled. 

“Why you gotta be so mean?!” Bezel snapped. “Stop it! He’s my friend! You’re just my Nanny, you don’t get to talk to them like that!” 

 

He jerked a little at the title of  _ friend _ , and looked at the girl who he’d never really known. Did he know her now? Or did nobody understand who she was, with a head and a heart full of fire?

The other woman looked like she’d been sucking on a lemon, but settled for a snap of her fingers. “Come, Princess.” She said in a crisp voice that would brook no argument. “We are leaving and going home.”

“But…” Bezel nibbled at her lip.

 

“ _ Now _ , Princess. And we will tell nobody about what happened here if you stop fighting me on this.”

“...He won’t be in trouble?” Bezel murmured, looking back at him in concern. 

“No.” The nanny sighed. “Not if we leave right this instant. Agreed?”

 

“...Fine.” Bezel let go of his hand, and he missed it the second her fingers drifted away. There were tears in her eyes, but she looked between him and his mother and kept on smiling. “Thanks for playing with me. I had fun.” She gave an elaborate curtsy, then toddled over to her nanny, who turned her around and walked her off, never letting go of her arm. Not her hand, just her arm, clutched by the elbow.

Princess Bezel, the youngest daughter of the Mage King of Atlantis, looked over her shoulder as she was led away, and the boy couldn’t help but stare back at her.

It wasn’t fair, he said to himself again. She had only wanted to play, and…

 

His mother engulfed him in a warm hug a second later, killing his thought. “Are you all right?” She asked fearfully, pulling back and examining him. “I woke up and you were gone and…”

“I’m fine, mom.” He tried to keep her from panicking. “I’m fine, see? We were just playing.”

“Did you...Did you  _ know _ …”

He looked down at the ground at that. Did he know he was playing with Princess Bezel? No. No, he hadn’t. He shook his head, and she sighed in relief. 

“Was she friendly?” She asked him, when she was less scared and back to being herself again. Tired, but cheerful. He looked up at his mom and nodded with a smile. “So, what did you play?”

“Tag. And tickle fights.” He explained, giggling when his mom let out a choking gasp. “I won.”

She just sighed and ran a hand through his hair before hugging him tight. “Did you have fun today then?”

“Yeah, mom. I did.” And he meant it, and he wasn’t as hungry. He wondered if he’d ever taste anything as delicious as the apple Bezel had given him ever again. He wondered if he’d ever see Bezel again.

When his mother was walking him home, though, he got the feeling that he wouldn’t. It was an ache that wouldn’t go away.

That night, he learned he’d been right, as over a dinner with more food than usual, his mom tried not to cry while she told him that they would be moving. To the Below. To the lands beneath Atlantis. She tried to make it sound like an adventure; she had a new job there, and there would be more to eat. Probably. 

He should have been sleeping. He knew that. Tomorrow was going to be a busy day, his mom had said. They would be packing up their belongings, leaving. He would be tired for most of it.

He didn’t care. His mother slept somehow, and he snuck past her, got outside, climbed up onto the roof and sat on top of their shack and stared up at the spires of the castle that stood at the heart of Atlantis, miles away. He stared at that castle and tried to think of Bezel, a Princess who had just wanted to be a normal girl for one afternoon. 

He stared at the castle and wondered if she would even remember him. 

He stared at the castle and remembered her green eyes and her fiery red hair and  _ knew _ that he would never forget her.

He stared at the shacks and smelly huts all around him, and up at the castle, and remembered that it wasn’t  _ fair _ . 

**Don’t get angry over the things you can’t change, my precious one.** He heard his mother’s words echo in him, as they always did, his guide and his conscience both.

He had trouble listening to it now.

 

The anger that Bezel had shown, even for a flash of an instant…

That came so much easier.


	2. And He Protected Her

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now living Below, the boy struggles to find meaning in his life, and wonders if a princess he only knew for an afternoon still remembers him. The Unification Day parade will give him the opportunity to answer his question.  
> It will cost him everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mood music for this chapter: "When The Levee Breaks" by Led Zeppelin.

**_Little Moment: The Sorceress And The Knight_ **

By Eric ‘Erico’ Lawson

* * *

 

**One: And He Protected Her**

 

_ The Below _

_ Euros, Granpeal Province _

_ Banali City _

  
  


The Below wasn’t like Atlantis. The weather wasn’t controlled down here, and the first thunderstorm he experienced in his life lashed against their tiny one bedroom home and made the thin wooden walls rattle a week after they’d arrived. His mother had held him tight as he whimpered through it, stroking his hair and his back and shushing him as one concussive boom after another made him clench his jaw tight. 

There was a school, but it wasn’t like the one he’d gone to when they lived up on the floating continent. It was crowded and they had even fewer supplies to learn with. There wasn’t an auraboard, just a slate with  _ chalk _ of all things. They drew on stone with softer stone, and wiped it away when they needed to keep going. 

There was medical care, but there wasn’t. Everything at the doctor’s was years out of date, the walls needed fresh paint, and they didn’t have the medicines that he used to get when he was sick up on Atlantis. He’d gotten the flu when he’d been younger and it had taken him a few days to get over it up there. Down here, in the Below, he got it again on his second week of school, and he didn’t go back to school until two weeks more had passed by.

They lived in Banali City in Granpeal Province, on the continent of Euros. It was ruled over, ‘Protected’ by a noblemage called Duke Filitas. They were forced to stand up at the start of every school day and bow to the picture of the duke, a fat man with an unamused expression, before they turned to the portrait of the Mage King of Atlantis to recite the pledge of gratitude. 

_ We pledge our gratitude to our protectors, to Atlantis. We give thanks for our lives and our freedom. We offer our service to our guardians. _

 

He had never had to say it when he lived on Atlantis. Down here, everyone said it, like it was expected, but nobody meant it. The boy could see it in their eyes, hear it in their voice. They said it because they had to, and nothing else.

 

His mother worked as a supervisor at a ‘processing plant.’ That meant, as she tried to explain it to him, they refined stone and metal from mines that were around them and changed them so they could be useful up on Atlantis, and for construction down in the Below.

There was food, but it wasn’t like the food he was used to. He saw vegetables, and grains, and they usually had meat every second day. But he didn’t see fruits anymore, or nuts, and he definitely didn’t see desserts and candies. When he had been seven, his mother had gotten them a small cake the size of his hands put together and they’d split it. It had been delicious. 

He was ten now, and cake was a distant memory.

 

**Don’t get angry over the things you can’t change, precious one.**

 

The other kids looked down on him because he hadn’t been born down here; There was even a group of bullies whose parents worked at his mom’s plant that took to harassing him. They beat him up once, and afterwards, he always made sure that he kept by an adult at school.

After school, he got better at running...and when he couldn’t do that, he learned how to fight. He still came home scraped up with bruises, and sometimes in blood. 

His mother didn’t smile as much anymore, but the times that he wasn’t able to clean himself up in time, she took to wiping away the dirt and the blood and using what little magic she had to make his bruises hurt less. Then she would hug him tight, tell him that things would get better, and that she loved him. Even that much of a comfort always made him feel better.

He learned that, for as rough as things were for him, that others had it even rougher. On one of the days that he didn’t have school and she didn’t have to work, she dragged him out of their house and went into an even rougher part of Banali City. He spent the rest of the day standing behind a table and handing out sandwiches and ladling out soup for a line of hungry, emaciated people that never seemed to end. He had whined and complained to his mother when they’d gotten there that he didn’t want to do it, that they should go have some fun.

By the end of that day, as they were sitting down themselves in the back of the kitchen at the shelter and having their own meal, his mother with gray-blue eyes undaunted by life looked at him.  _ “We will be judged by the state we leave the world in when we leave it.”  _ She said, in the tone that he knew meant she was talking about something important and he needed to pay attention to it.  _ “I want you to remember that, my precious one. Remember that  _ **_people_ ** _ are more important than  _ **_things_ ** _.” _

And he had nodded, and tried to remember it as well as all of her other lessons. She had so many.

 

But it was hard remembering them when that first, most important lesson about not becoming angry kept slipping to the wayside. Especially when a week after they’d helped out in that soup kitchen, she had taken him to an art festival on the other side of the city. They had needed special passes to get past the guards and the gates that separated them, passes that he’d never seen before, and which the guards had warned his mother only allowed them access up to curfew in the evening and no longer. If they tarried past that, they could be arrested.

He remembered her fake smile as she nodded to the stern guard dressed in armor, and  _ thanked him _ for his concern. They had brought their own lunches on that trip, and he realized why as soon as they passed food vendors past the gates and goggled at the prices.

Past those gates, everything was  _ clean _ and  _ beautiful _ and it was almost like being back in Atlantis again. Aside from being half-starved and living far away from everything. Which they still were, he realized. It was just now they were Below.

Atlantis was lost to them.

 

***

 

The buildings were made of sturdier materials, made to last instead of just to be affordable. They walked past all of them and went to one which had windows that made up entire  _ walls _ , and inside the doors there was a massive water fountain that spun and spiraled with water and magical lights. They looked at paintings done by people his mother had heard of and he could care less about. They looked at statues of the great heroes of Atlantis from years before, from its founding and from battles past.

But it was one exhibit, placed in the museum almost as an afterthought, that his mother insisted on stopping at. 

“It’s a traveling exhibit.” She explained. “It goes from province to province down here. It’s only here for this week, that’s why we’re here today.” It was set up in a smaller lobby with lots of benches around it to sit on, and they sat down and ate their sandwiches and vegetable sticks and drank their water. Others in finer clothes than theirs came by as well to examine it, and most of them ignored him and his mother. At least, they were ignored after one good sneer or upturned nose. His mother sighed as he started to glare back, touched his arm.

“Don’t let them see them getting to you.” She told him, another one of her lessons. One about finding pride in yourself when nobody else offered it. So he sighed and let go of that puff of anger, and stowed the rest down inside of him. He felt it burn for a few seconds before it disappeared, and he focused on the exhibit again.

It wasn’t a statue. It wasn’t a painting. It was a thing of glass and metal, and the pieces of it hovered above a glowing pedestal base, slowly rotating around each other in a complicated pattern he couldn’t figure out.

It was magical, of course. It would be hard to miss that, the air fairly sang with it. But it was magic without a purpose. So the pieces floated. Why? The pieces twirled and rotated. Why?

He didn’t quite get it, but his mother prodded at him. “Go ahead. Take a closer look at it.” She urged him. “There’s a sign on the pedestal that will tell you what it’s named. It’ll give you a better idea of what you’re looking at.”

 

He really didn’t want to, but one thing that the boy had learned by paying attention today was just how much his mother had arranged just for them to get this chance. She had felt it was important for him to come here. To see  _ this piece _ of art. No matter how humiliating it was for them with everyone looking at them like they didn’t belong. No matter how much it must have cost her to make this happen.

 

So he finished up his lunch, gave the wrappings to his mother to be disposed of, and pushed off of the bench. He went over to the artifact of spinning, hovering metal and glass and stared at the base, and read the message there.

 

**Ducks On a Pond- Animated Artifact**

**Enspelled by Princess Bezel Lantea (Age 9)**

 

He blinked and stared at it again. And then again, wondering if the name would change.

It didn’t.

Princess  _ Bezel _ had made this? But she was just a  _ girl!  _ And younger than he was! Sure, it was just a year’s difference, but…

 

And then he felt his mother come up behind him and rest a hand on her shoulder. “Try looking at the artifact again, dear heart.” She urged him. 

So he did, looking with fresh eyes now that he knew who had made it. He squinted at the shards of glass and metal, blinking as he realized that the glass was colored, and the metal was reflective on every side, and…

And when it moved, from the distance at the right angle, in the right light…

 

He saw a picture of a boy and a girl beside a pond, throwing bread to a flock of ducks floating close by.

She remembered.

_ She remembered him. _

 

He’d eventually told his mother about everything that the princess had done that last afternoon before they moved away from Atlantis. He told the story, and after the telling, began to doubt himself. Doubted that it had happened the way he’d remembered it. Why would a princess care about a boy she had only known for an hour? 

But she remembered. And it…

He…

For her to work magic into glass and steel...

 

He didn’t realize he was crying until his mother pulled him into a hug and wiped his tears away with a napkin. 

“Don’t let anyone ever tell you that you’re not important. That you don’t matter.” She whispered fiercely into his ear. “Maybe the world will never know your name, or care that you lived. It doesn’t matter what the  _ world _ thinks about, or cares about. You mattered to  _ her _ . So you keep going, my precious one. You keep going, and you find the people who  _ do _ care about you. And you never stop caring about them in return.”

“I promise, momma.” He whispered, and hugged her tighter for giving him the chance.

 

They went home afterwards, passed through the gates again an hour before curfew, and when he was in his room, the boy took graphite to paper and tried to draw a rough copy of what the princess had made. It looked horrible, but his mother still laughed and hung it up next to the foodbox. He eventually forgot the bad parts about that day at the art museum, started to only remember the good parts. Lunch with his mother, looking at the artifact and wondering if Bezel really remembered him, or just recalled an afternoon in the park with a commoner. 

 

And then, six months after they arrived Below, all of Banali City was suddenly full of nervous energy and people preparing for a parade and a festival.

Members of the Atlantean royal family were coming to visit for Unification Day.

 

***

 

The parade was to be held on the Midway, the long stretch of road between the Upper and Lower sections of the city. It was the traditional route for ceremonies, his mother told him when they walked with collapsible chairs to get seats for the parade four hours before it was set to start.

But the boy knew better. He was eleven now, had just passed that mark a few weeks before. His time Below had opened his eyes. He knew why they used this road; it was meant to divide them.

Those from the lower castes weren’t allowed to cross the street to the upper caste side of the road, even though there were so many of them that they crowded the poor side and there were wide open spaces just across from them. Mage constables patrolled the line, but most of them were on the poor side, as if to keep them back.

Because of his mother’s foresight, they’d been able to get a spot along the parade route close to the provincial Duke’s box. Not directly across, but twenty yards down the way was close enough as the crowds kept filling in and the warmth of the morning increased. He nibbled on one of the snacks that they had brought with them and kept staring at the Duke’s box, where Duke Filitas and all of his royal guests would be sitting.

Once they arrived, that was. He added it to the reasons to seethe that it stayed empty for so long, even as the appointed hour of the start of the parade approached, and felt that boiling pit of rage inside of his chest bloom a little bit higher before he shoved it back down. There were guards stationed all around the empty box, and his mother snickered a little before letting him in on the joke. They were protecting nothing but air, after all. One had to find the humor in that.

With only ten minutes to spare before the start of the parade, the ‘guests of honor’ finally arrived, accompanied by a triumphal fanfare from brass horns that stilled conversations. The Duke appeared first, waving at the top of the steps before moving to the side and bowing slightly as another figure appeared. Close by, a herald announced off every member of the Duke’s Box as they appeared and came on.

Duke Filitas, naturally, then Prince Greeve Lantea, the Mage King’s brother and fourth-in-line for the throne after the Mage King’s two sons.  There was Duchess Flora Vanwell, Prince Greeve’s wife, and their son Nereas. Apparently, they were attending in place of the Mage King himself, who had been extended the original invitation.

But it was the next two attendees, or specifically, the younger of the two that made the boy startle and stare. Walking hand in hand with Duchess Filitas was the Princess Bezel, resplendent in a dress that probably cost more than his mother earned in a year. She’d changed how her hair was plaited, but he still remembered her face, and even at a distance, he could see that her hair still glowed like fire, and her eyes sparkled like wet grass.

No. Like something more precious.

 

His mother must have caught him staring, because she nudged him in the shoulder and chuckled, and he blushed and looked away. He kept looking at Bezel, but he made sure that he wasn’t staring. Furtive side glances worked just as well. He paid no attention to the rest of the attendees in the Duke’s Box: Local administrators and factory managers well beyond his mother’s pay grade, and other officials of middling rank who had sucked up enough to the Duke for the honor of attending in his personal stand.

The parade started up in earnest, and soon bands of musicians and local representatives of the guilds and the factories came strolling by, bearing instruments and banners. Unification Day had begun as a celebration of Atlantis taking to the skies and Terra being protected at last from the threat of outsiders, but over time it had taken on a decidedly less serious air. Children screamed and went running for tiny sweets that were tossed out haphazardly by people on the larger floats, and then were forced to scatter as the impressive hovering spell-transports used by the local police and mage garrisons drove by. His mother crowded over him and protected him from flailing limbs as one float came by and started lobbing entire loaves of  _ bread _ into the crowd, setting off a near frenzy. 

_ Bread and Circuses _ , his mother had once scoffed derisively, explaining it as a mechanism to distract. Funny that it took almost being trampled on for him to understand what she meant by it. They didn’t really  _ care _ about the people they were handing out food and pocket change to; they scattered it to the winds and laughed as people fought over it. He saw it all and felt that burning sensation in his chest deepen. 

Only one thing stopped it from burning out of control; Bezel. While the rest of her extended family sat either laughing and jeering at the sight of everyone across from them fighting over scraps, she shifted in her seat uncomfortably, looking like she wanted to be anywhere else but here, watching it. Being a  _ participant _ in it. 

Surely she  _ knew _ that this was what happened? Or had she been so sheltered about the world that when suddenly exposed to how things really were, it left her squeamish?

That discomfort, that look of growing alarm and pain and…

_ Anger _ . She was angry that this was happening.

It poured over him like a balm, quenching his own fire. She was different. She wasn’t like the others.

She had made a statue because of a single afternoon’s joy. He held onto that thought and wished that he could ask her what she was thinking. 

Ask her if she remembered him at all, months later. But she never looked that closely at the crowd, never saw his face. Or if she did, she looked past him and didn’t see him for who he was. 

 

He didn’t have time to think about it, unfortunately. Because it wasn’t long after the bread float that another one came rolling down the street, bearing a flag of the local miner’s guild.

And then the entire float exploded into magical fire and shrapnel, and his world filled with screams.

 

***

 

He had been far enough away to survive the blast, but his arm still stung where a splinter of burning lumber had embedded itself. All around him were the screams of the dying, the silence of the dead, and the bellowing terror of those fleeing from the scene. The Duke’s Box was ruined, the protective wards were cracked and barely hanging on, were, in fact,  _ shattered _ in places with injured people there as well. And into the chaos came a wave of over a dozen men armed with knives and sledges and makeshift shields, all of them burning with magic. There were red auras and orange ones, and even one man with a sword who glowed yellow. 

“Death to the Duke!  _ Death to the Royals! _ ” Came their shout, and bolt after bolt of mana slammed into the already crumbling wards, blasting them apart. And when the wards fell, the people who had been inside of them struggled to defend themselves…

And they failed, with the guards falling first, and then it all…

 

The boy saw it even as his ears kept ringing. He started running as soon as the first shouts from those men echoed in his ears like he was underwater and they were speaking in long, slow words. He felt something grab his arm, hold it tight, and he whirled about to see his mother bleeding from her scalp but still alive, still  _ standing _ , and worried out of her mind screaming at him.

He couldn’t hear her, but he knew that she was begging him to run, to get away.

The boy couldn’t. He shook his head and pulled his arm away from her, leaving her stunned. He tried to talk to her, but he couldn’t hear himself. He screamed instead, and  _ that _ , he barely heard.

“I can’t let them hurt her!” It was enough to shock his mother from grabbing at him again, and he turned around and ran as fast as he could, hoping, praying…

 

None of the men slaughtering the people in the stands paid any attention to a boy that ran  _ towards _ the danger instead of away from it. He didn’t dare charge up into the stands, into the middle of it all. Spells and wild blasts were flying  _ everywhere _ , as the few people able to defend themselves tried desperately through concussions and their injuries to do so. He looked up into the stands, and…

And he couldn’t see Bezel there any longer. He saw the Duke, gutted and choking on a dagger shoved through his throat, and his wife lying in a heap on the stands, her head bashed in. But he couldn’t see Bezel, who had been by the Duke’s wife’s side…

In a flash of insight, he ran around the side of the Duke’s Box and ducked underneath.

She was huddled on the ground, her face shock white and a hand clamped over her mouth. It was what kept her from shrieking out as she spun around to look at him, her dress spattered in blood and dirt. None of it was her own, though, he could see that from one look.

The boy held out a hand towards her. “Come on!” He whispered, and prayed that he wasn’t shouting it. She stared at him, locked in fear, and…

Princess Bezel blinked. She got up and stared at him even closer, and reached a hand out towards him.

Did she remember him? No, the boy shook the thought off and grabbed her hand. She didn’t remember him. She was just scared out of her mind and taking any help she could get. 

His hearing was slowly starting to come back as he pulled her out from underneath the bleachers, and scouted a course away from the massacre that kept them out of sight as much as possible. He got them a block away and around a corner before someone caught up to them, and he almost started flailing before the smell of his mother’s arms calmed him down. 

His mother was here, and she hugged them both tightly. “You’re alive, thank mana you’re both still  _ alive _ …” She cried softly.

Bezel still hadn’t said a word, and when his mother released him, the boy looked at her.

She was crying. She needed to cry, what had happened, what was still happening was horrible. 

But she reached a hand up towards him, and he froze. She traced the side of his face with her fingers.

“I remember you.” She whispered tearfully. “What are you  _ doing _ down here?”

“...We moved.” The boy answered. And then her arms were around him, and her face was buried into his chest and she was crying.

 

He stood there, not sure whether to push her off or hold her back. His mind swirled. 

She  _ remembered him. _

 

As the screams of the crowd began to diminish, the shouts of the attackers grew louder. “The Princess got away!  _ Find Her!  _ **_Find her and kill her!_ ** ” 

His mother grabbed their hands, the terror back on her bleeding face. “We have to run. We have to  _ run _ . I need you both to be brave, and be quiet, and  _ run. _ Can you do that?”

The boy nodded. He knew how dangerous this was. Life Below had prepared him better than most, and while he was afraid, he could move.

He looked to Bezel and saw her still struggling to not freeze in terror. But she grabbed his hand and squeezed it tight, and managed to nod.

He squeezed her hand back. If she could stay with him…

If he kept her close, they would be okay.

 

***

 

They made it another five blocks and another ten minutes before one of the killers found them. It must have been Bezel’s red hair that did it, or her fancy clothes. She stood out too much in the lower quarter. They ran anyways, but all of them were flagging. His mother must have been exhausted, and Bezel was stumbling, kept up on her feet only by the boy’s arm constantly pulling her along. 

One of the men caught up to them just as they turned a corner, and he must have been a local, because he cut off their retreat with a wild swing of a scythe meant to cut at the winter wheat that grew outside of the city. Both he and the princess screamed and tumbled clear, but his mother didn’t dodge in time, and it gashed a wicked slice out of her leg. Somehow she stumbled clear and put herself between the man and her son and the Princess, and then…

He had never seen his mother conjure up magic for anything more elaborate than a minor healing cantrip. He had figured she lacked the ability. 

But in that moment, with death staring at them, she conjured up two handfuls of bright orange mana in her fists and  _ threw _ it, and the man with the scythe burned and screamed.

It wasn’t enough, not for a quick kill. Somehow, the man struggled one step at a time as his clothes burned, as his flesh burned, as the fire melted down to his bones and managed one last swing, aiming for her neck. She tried to dodge, and failed.

He buried it into her spine instead, and they both fell to the ground; him dead, and her, dying. And the boy screamed for her and raced to her side.

“Mama.” The boy whispered, running his hands over her face. Why wasn’t she moving? Why wasn’t she getting back up? Why couldn’t she even lift up a hand to touch him?!

“It’ll...it’ll be all right...my precious one.” Her eyes were so full of pain, and tears, but she held on. “You’re okay. You’re both okay.”

He held her tight, wanting to cry, but his throat closed up on him, denying him the chance.

“You’re so brave.” She whispered, somehow still smiling. “Don’t ever stop being brave.”

“Don’t go.” He begged her, and felt Bezel come up beside him, kneel down. The princess of all the world reached a trembling hand out and stroked it over his mother’s forehead.

“I’m sorry.” Bezel whispered. 

“It’s all right.” His mother shushed her. Her breathing was shallower now. Her eyes were duller. “It’s...right.” Her eyes moved between them. “Together.” She wheezed out. “Stay...together.”

She died on the streets of Banali City, with only her son and a princess to bear witness to her end. Bezel started to cry.

The boy screamed inside his heart. He screamed, and he felt it burn, and this time, he couldn’t stop it. Somehow, he stood up and took Bezel by the hand, and didn’t cry.

“We have to go.” He heard himself saying, but it didn’t sound like him. Not exactly.

“But...your mom…”

He tugged her hand hard and started running, forcing her to keep up. Behind them, he heard the shouts of at least two more of the killers.

 

***

 

It hurt. It all hurt too much. He wanted his mother, but she was dead. The Princess remembered him, half a year after one afternoon together, but she was being hunted. And he was pulling her away from it all, trying to  _ escape _ , when his legs felt like lead and his head was still swimming from the pain of it all. He wanted to scream. He wanted to  _ burn it all. _

But then he felt Bezel’s hand squeeze his, and the rage in his heart banked just enough to keep him going. But they were still kids, and they were both exhausted and hurt, and she had never run this much in her entire life. And the adults were stronger, faster, and they knew the terrain. He’d lived here for six months and only seen spots.

 

The last two killers who’d been able to keep pace with them caught up ten blocks later, and trapped them in an alley.

“No way out, princess.” The first of them, a fellow with two long daggers, leered. The other brandished a thick hammer that would break bones with even a glancing hit. 

Hammer man’s eyes fixated on the princess for a long time, and then he finally stared at the boy. “Shove off, kid. You can’t save her. You shouldn’t have even tried.”

Bezel whimpered and squeezed his hand tighter, and the boy felt her bury her face into his back.

The boy could have shouted a hundred different things then. He could have asked them  _ why _ . Why they were doing this. Why his mother had to die. He could have told them to back off. He should have told Bezel to let go of him, to  _ run _ . But she couldn’t run any longer, he could feel it.

There was nowhere else to go. Nobody else to turn to. And he had  _ nothing _ now. No mother, no home. Not even a name, because nobody else ever cared enough to remember it.

He felt the weight of a princess pressed into his back, shaking, crying. Expecting the end.

 

No more.

She was the only person left who still cared enough to remember him.

_ No more. _

That burning rage inside of him swelled up, and the boy knew what it was, even though he had never been able to reach for it before. 

_ No. More! _

They would kill her, the last bit of life and warmth in his life. They would kill a princess who got angry at the unfairness of the world and remembered a boy from one afternoon playing together.

**_NO MORE!_ **

And he felt the magic explode around him, a boiling nimbus of green light that made him feel invincible. 

 

Bezel pulled back from him with a wild gasp, and he chuckled darkly when both of the men took a step back and went pale at the sight of him.

“A  _ green? _ He’s a  _ Green _ ?!” The man with the daggers got out. 

“Shut up, he’s just a  _ kid _ !” The other killer snarled, and charged for him while the other hesitated.

 

He tried to remember what his mother had done. She’d called up her power, and...and she had  _ thrown it _ . Hers had been a wave of fire that clung and stuck to the man who had killed her, burning him slowly.

The boy’s attack came as a concentrated pulse, a blast. He aimed dead center at the man with the hammer, whose eyes went wide as he tried to dodge out of the way, and dodged too late. 

It took off his arm at the shoulder, and the rest of his shoulder with it, and the hammer fell to the ground beside the killer as he screamed and  _ screamed _ .

Then the boy stumbled back a step, feeling an impact in his stomach. He looked past the wounded dying killer to the second man, who held one dagger back and who had one arm stretched out towards him, shaking in terror. Had he tried to fire magic back at him?

The boy’s rage increased when he heard Bezel scream behind him. That man had hurt her.

_ He had HURT Bezel! _

And the boy howled, and unleashed it all; all of his rage, all of his fire, and it flew down the alley as a wave of burning force, and both men were reduced to charred corpses. The screaming, armless killer didn’t even have time to turn away from it.

In the wake of that last attack, all was silent. No other killers came. The boy stumbled on his feet, feeling so tired, so drained…

So  _ dizzy _ . He…

He must have fallen down, because he was looking up at the sky. And now he could feel pain in his stomach. He reached a hand to it and froze when his fingertips touched…

_ Oh. _ That was where the man’s other dagger went. He hadn’t hit Bezel.

Bezel.

And there she was, leaning over him, her green eyes full of tears.

“No. Don’t go.” She sobbed, and he felt her hands shaking his chest. “Please! Don’t go!”

Everything hurt. He smiled anyways. “You’re okay.” He said, grimacing. Speaking loudly hurt too much. “You’re...okay.” He repeated, whispering it this time. And that didn’t hurt. 

Her hair had come unbraided in their flight from death, and wild red strands the color of fire hung over him like a curtain. It hid them from the rest of the world. 

Made it seem like it was just him and her. And he…

“You remembered me.” He said, and pulled the hand away from his stomach to touch her face. He didn’t realize until after she recoiled and brought a hand to her face and came back with blood on her fingertips just how badly he was hurt.

The world started to slip away then, going dark at the edges. She screamed at him again, and then he heard footsteps coming near, shouting her name in fear.

More killers? No, she wasn’t terrified. She was still afraid, but not of them.

“ **Help** !” She screamed, her young voice cracking. “He’s hurt!  _ Help him! _ ”

 

**_You’re so brave. Don’t ever stop being brave._ **

The boy heard his mother’s voice, and closed his eyes.

Bezel’s sobbing was the last thing he heard before peace finally came for him.

 

***

 

He woke up, and wondered for a few seconds why he was still breathing. Why he was still alive. 

He shifted and winced and wondered why he was lying in a bed that was so soft. He’d never had a bed this soft. The boy took in a breath, and wondered why everything smelled so  _ clean _ . He heard a soft beeping, some kind of machine close by, but not right next to him. 

None of it felt right. None of it seemed like it was real, and he didn’t dare open his eyes. 

He didn’t have a choice after a low chuckle. “Finally back in the land of the living, boy?”

The boy’s eyes cracked open. He was in a healing room, but so much nicer and cleaner than any he’d ever been at in his life. There were pads on his right arm, which seemed to be sending a signal to the machine that beeped. 

Sitting across from him, in one of the chairs left there for visitors was a man dressed in armor reading something on a handheld manaboard. The armor of a Mage Knight.

“It’s a miracle you pulled through.” The man went on, helmet lying beside him. He set the manaboard down and ran a gloved hand through his pepper-gray beard. “Stabbed through the stomach like that, and...and you still managed an incineration wave. Untrained.”

The boy opened his mouth to speak, coughed and felt tears form in his eyes. The soldier got up from the chair and came over. “Easy, kid. Easy. Here. You’re probably parched dry.” He grabbed a cup of water from somewhere nearby and held it up for the boy to drink. The boy coughed at first, but finally got a few mouthfuls down. Enough to lubricate his throat. Enough that he could talk.

“Where am I?”

“You’re on Atlantis.” The soldier said. “At the Royal Medical Center. The Princess insisted on it.”

The boy slumped back against his pillow. “She’s okay?” He asked weakly.

The soldier’s face twitched a little bit at that. “She’s safe. She was the only survivor out of that  _ whole fucking mess.  _ The king’s brother, the Duke, their families, the other delegates...She was a little scraped up, plenty scared, but she’s alive, and healthy, because of you.”

The boy just breathed at that.

“I’m Knight Commander Alastair Sloane, by the way.” The soldier went on. “My unit was the one that found you and the Princess. You were touch and go for way too long. She never left your side. Not once, not until we got here, and...And her father…”

The soldier closed his eyes, and the boy wondered what had him so upset he had to stop talking. Whatever it was finally passed, and the Knight Commander sighed and let it go. 

The boy filled the silence. “Who were they?”

“The rebels? Malcontents. Just dirt-grubbing Below-ers. Angry at having to pay their due for living protected lives. They thought they could strike a blow at the royal family. Well. That won’t be happening again. The city’s under Martial Law. We’ll weed out all of the traitors.” There was heat in Sloane’s voice at that, and the boy winced.

“My...my mother, she...did you…” He asked the Knight Commander, who schooled his face into a blank mask again and shook his head.

“The Princess told us about her. I’m sorry, we couldn’t recover her body, not in the time we had.”

The boy shut his eyes and thought of his mother’s body still lying there in the streets of a city on fire, and screamed inside of his head again.

**Don’t get angry over the things you can’t change, my precious one.**

 

“Do you have anybody else? Any other family?” The Knight Commander asked him.

_ I have no one. _ The boy wanted to say, but it stuck in his throat. Sloane saw it anyways. 

“Can I stay with Bezel?” The boy finally asked, his voice full of pain.

“You’re not royalty. And you have the Crown’s gratitude for saving the Princess, but...no. It wouldn’t go that far. We could restore your citizenship, though. Make you a ward of the state.”

An orphanage, the Knight Commander meant. The boy had heard and seen enough of those to go screaming in the other direction.

“What else?” He asked Sloane, who drew in a long breath and then let it out just as slowly.

“The Mage Knights serve the Crown.” Sloane declared. “And with your mana, your instinctive command of battle magic...The Order wouldn’t turn down your application. Not with my recommendation.”

“Would I be with her?”

“With her  _ how _ ?” Sloane asked in a suddenly icy, pointed tone, and the boy flinched and wondered why he was angry. “Don’t get ideas, boy. Even as a Knight, you’d still be leagues beneath her caste. If you’re sweet on her, then get rid of those dreams right this second. They’ll never happen.”

But the boy had nothing else left to him, no family, no home, nothing else but the dream of Bezel. The dream of a princess who saw him as a friend.

He opened his eyes and stared back at the man. “I will serve  _ her _ .”

Knight Commander Sloane stepped away and sighed. “You’re not going to have an easy go of it, kid.”

“Life isn’t easy.” The boy countered. He refused to look away. He refused to blink. He just kept staring until Sloane finally broke.

“Miracles don’t happen, kid.” He said, but after a pause, added, “At least they didn’t before you lived.” And it was as close to a concession of  _ maybe _ as he was going to get. So the boy nodded.

“I’ll join up.” He said, and Sloane nodded.

 

There came a knock on the door, and shortly after, a healer came in with a medical manaboard tucked under one arm. The woman looked through thin wireframe glasses between the Knight Commander and the boy in the bed and smiled. “So, up at last are we, young man? You had everyone worried.”

He shifted in the bed, realizing that he was dressed in a thin shift meant for ease of access to his body by the healers. “Who cares about me?” He mumbled.

The healer’s eyes crinkled up at the hollowness in his question. “Princess Bezel, for one. And because she cares...the rest of us do.” She came over and leaned over the machine to take the readings, then came over and kissed his forehead. “You saved her life. On behalf of all of us...thank you. You’re a hero.”

_ I’m nobody _ , he almost said. He blinked back the tears. He didn’t dare cry here. Not around all of these adults. 

The healer brushed his hair back anyways. “You are. And if anyone tells you differently while you’re here, you tell me. And I’ll scream at them until they apologize.” She waited, and he finally nodded to let her see he’d heard her. “Your readings are all improving, but we’ll want to keep you for another day or two yet. Make sure that you’re well and truly on the mend. Gut wounds are notoriously problematic for complications.” She stepped back away and nodded to Sloane. “Knight Commander. I wasn’t aware that you’d been stationed as a guard for the boy.”

“I’m off-duty.” The older man supplied calmly. “And it’s still visiting hours. Didn’t have anywhere else better to be.” The woman glared at him, and he met her anger with cool indifference. “I was just having a chat with the boy.”

“Any questions you might have pertaining to your investigation can wait until  _ after _ he’s fully recovered. He’s not a suspect, the last I heard.”

Sloane chuckled. “He’s anything but a suspect. He’s a recruit now. Just volunteered.”

The healer’s face went pale and looked back at the boy in horror. “You didn’t. Why? You didn’t have to...You don’t have to  _ do _ that!”

He didn’t understand why the healer would  _ care _ what he did with his life. He had nothing now. Nothing but…

He shut his eyes. He didn’t even have Bezel. She was a Princess, and he was...He was only…

“He’s a  _ Green _ .” Knight Commander Sloane declared, bringing the weight of his authority to bear. “The Crown could use him. Especially now. The Mage King’s brother, his wife, his son, are dead. The line of succession has been damaged. If it hadn’t been for him, Princess Bezel Lantea would be  _ dead _ right now. There is no better place for this boy than the Order. For the Royal Family...and for him as well.”

The healer’s face fell further, and she came back to the boy, kneeled down to look at him on his level. “If he’s forcing you into this...if you’re being coerced, tell me. I can protect you.”

She was a nice woman. Nicer than most he’d known in his painful life, and she worried, but she didn’t  _ get it _ . 

It was the only way he would ever get close to Princess Bezel ever again.

 

“It’s my choice.” He said, and left it at that. The healer didn’t like it, but she stood back up and removed her glasses to wipe at her eyes.

“I see. But you aren’t going until you’re fully healed. And that will be as long as I  _ say _ it is.”

“Whatever he needs.” Sloane chuckled. “I won’t argue that point.”

“Now, then.” The healer said, slipping her glasses back on. “Do you feel well enough for a visitor, mister hero?”

The boy blinked. “A visitor?” He wasn’t sure who the healer meant, but he nodded hesitantly. The healer smiled and ruffled his hair, then went for the door and stuck her head out, saying something softly.

 

Seconds later, Princess Bezel herself came racing in, followed at a more sedate pace by an exhausted looking woman that the boy vaguely remembered...her Nanny?

Bezel let out a happy cry at the sight of him awake and sitting up in his bed, and charged at full speed to grab him tightly around the ribs. He grunted slightly in pain, but the healer must not have been too concerned, because all she did was laugh.

“Bezel?” The boy whispered, when he could breathe again. The princess let out a happy noise and squeezed him tighter still, burying her face into his shoulder. “What are you doing here?”

“That’s _Princess_ _Bezel_ to you, young man.” The Nanny snapped, and both the boy and Sloane sat up a little straighter afterwards. But all Bezel did was pull back out of the hug and glare at the old woman.

“I would like to speak with my rescuer, if you wouldn’t mind.” She declared, suddenly sounding formal and stuffy as any member of the higher castes that the boy had ever seen. She wore a simple dress of blue and silver, made of high quality fabric, but lacking the adornments and frills of the dress she’d been wearing at the parade. Her shoes were flat-soled and functional, not like the ridiculous shoes that he’d seen others wearing at the art museum in Banali City. Her hair was plaited in a different weave this time, a simple knot more than halfway down the length of it that left a clear sign of its full body behind her head. She folded her arms in front of her in a motion too practiced to be natural, and held herself as tall as a nine...maybe ten year old girl could. 

Sloane and the nanny and the healer all shifted and looked at one another, and Bezel’s placid mask shifted into a scowl. “In  _ private _ .” And to make the point clear, she lifted a hand and pointed to the door.

The healer laughed and went first. “As you wish, your highness.” 

Sloane cleared his throat and went for his helmet, sliding it back on. “Well. I’ll leave you to it then, boy. But remember what we talked about. Do your best in training. I’ll try to keep a spot open for you once you graduate.” And before the nanny could protest or try to stay, the Knight Commander grabbed her by the arm and dragged her out as she squawked the entire way. The door clicked shut behind them, and when Bezel looked back to the boy, the mask disappeared. She bit her lip.

“What did he say? About training?”

The boy stared down into his lap. “I’m...signing up.”

Bezel rocked back and forth for a bit more, then started to climb up onto the bed. “Move.” She said, and he snorted as he did so.

“Bossy.” The boy complained. She ignored it and settled for staring at him, poking and prodding him and nibbling on her lip. “What’s wrong with you?”

“...You almost died.” She whispered, and he realized that she was trying not to cry. “Why?”

“I got stabbed.” He said, answering what he thought was her question, and winced when she smacked him in the shoulder with an angry hiss. Then he sighed as she leaned into him and hugged him as tight as she dared, trying to steer clear of his still healing injury. 

“Why did you do that?” Bezel clarified, softer than before. “Why would you...For me?”

He felt the tears prickle at his eyes. His hand moved on its own, going around her shoulders. “I...I saw your duck pond statue. You remembered me. Nobody ever remembered me before. I’m not important.”

She squeezed him tighter then. “You’re important to  _ me _ .” His throat closed up on him again at that, and his mother’s voice rang in his head.

 

**Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you’re not important. That you don’t** **_matter_ ** **.**

“Why are you signing up?” She whispered. “You don’t have to. I can...You can go  _ anywhere _ . And I’ll find a way to visit. We can be friends anywhere.”

She was trying to talk him out of it. She almost succeeded. But the boy shut his eyes and leaned the side of his head down against hers, and rubbed his cheek against her hair. It was as soft as he’d dreamed, and it smelled like strawberries. It was a pretty little lie, but it was still a lie. Just a fancy dream from a little girl who didn’t know any better.

“It’s the only way I can protect you.” He answered, and tried not to feel the hurt that built up inside of himself again.

Princess Bezel Lantea sniffed once, twice. Nuzzled his shoulder, and just held him, like he might float away from her. Like he almost had.

“I’m so sorry about your mom.” She said, croaking on the words. “She was so beautiful. She...She loved you.”

The boy swallowed down the hurt, and didn’t stop the tears. Couldn’t.

“She loved you too.” He cracked, and slumped against her as he finally cried it all out.

And she held him the entire time.


	3. She Made Him Her Knight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three years pass, and the recruit graduates at the age of 14 and becomes a Squire. Brought into a tactical unit by the Knight Commander who first got him to sign on, the Squire is faced with a trial that will shake him to his core, and leave him wondering if he has made the right decision in his life.  
> Only Bezel can give him the answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mood Music For This Chapter:  
> -Zolim Mission ("No Leaf Clover", Metallica)  
> -Aftermath/Ending ("The Rain Song", Led Zeppelin)

**_Little Moment: The Sorceress And The Knight_ **

By Eric ‘Erico’ Lawson

 

**Two: She Made Him Her Knight**

The boy didn’t see Bezel for another three years.

            Mage Knight training was thorough and exhaustive. He learned to harness his mana, how to draw upon the living land safely for more. He learned martial combat and the Arts alike. He learned of the spectrum, the scale by which mages were measured from the lowest users capable of red and orange auras, to the yellow auras that served as the cutoff mark for the Mage Knights’ combat squads. Those who had red and orange auras would be shunted to support and logistics roles after graduation. His magic was green, right in the middle of the spectrum. The only ones stronger were the blue auras of the most experienced mage knights…And very rarely, the pink hues before indigo. Of the last colors on the spectrum, indigo and violet? The instructors had only one word of warning; _Run._

            His schooling in the basic subjects became much more intensive; he learned _of_ the languages of the world, though no time was spent on learning to speak them, for Atlantean was the only state-sponsored tongue. He learned about mathematics and the history of Atlantis in much greater depth than any class he’d ever been in before.

            He was younger than the rest, and smaller too. His classmates were all true Atlanteans, born and raised either on the island itself, or in the walled districts of the cities Below, masters of their petty holdings. They had never gone hungry, or needed to develop a survival instinct. They had never killed before. Occasionally, they would come after him because of his status as a Below-er, or because they were jealous of his success. He took his lumps. He gave worse back.

            The recruit learned about the threats from the stars that the Knights stood against. They were fewer than before, because Terra had gained a reputation. Now only the most foolhardy dared to try anything stupid. Most either left Terra alone, or traded for the few items that the Order hadn’t outlawed for sale. Terran foods were quite prized on other worlds, apparently.

            Through it all, he never forgot his promise. When he took his vow of service at the start, he lowered his voice amidst the throng when they pledged themselves to the Mage King, and instead whispered _Bezel_ so that nobody could hear him.

            He thought of her every day when things grew quiet. He kept to himself, he met every trial, and he never forgot the fire in his heart.

The recruit remembered his mother’s lessons. He remembered them above the ones his drill sergeants and his teachers forced into him, and valued them above all others.

            In the practice ring, he struggled at first. He had more experience in scrapes, and a survivor’s instinct, but the others were healthier. He did not develop the rippling biceps and bulging pectorals of his peers, but he gained strength of his own. He was faster than any of them.

            The recruit had been running for too long in his life. The rest had never needed to run from anything. Or to anything. Or anyone.

            He was second in the class rankings when their three years of training were over, even though he was a year younger than all the others. He would have been first, but one of the teachers refused to give him full credit for an essay question on his final exam on ethics.

            He took the half credit and stood behind his answer, because he refused to accept that an _Atlantean life_ was worth more than someone who lived on the ground below. And though it hurt to be denied the chance to stand up on stage at his graduation and give the Valedictorian speech, he refused to dwell on it. It didn’t matter, anyways.

            **Don’t let anyone ever tell you that you’re not important. That you don’t matter.**

 

            He mattered. His mother had died to prove that. And the princess had come and cried with him during his hospitalization when he had been recovering to prove that.

            But he hadn’t seen her since. He hadn’t expected to, not really; royalty walking into the barracks of a training camp would have been impossible to explain, and intolerable for the rest of her family more than likely. It would have been nice, however.

 

            On the day of his graduation, there was a showing of the class out on the parade grounds. The royal family would be in attendance.

            She had remembered him after six months.

            The recruit wondered if Bezel would remember him after three years.

 

***

 

_The Royal Mage Knight Academy_

_Furkansia District, Flying Continent of Atlantis_

 

 

            It still galled him slightly to stand at parade rest in his crisply forged dress uniform while the top-ranked graduate of their class broke ranks and marched up to the podium in the stands, passing through the wards around the dais where the school’s administrators sat. And up in the most protected seats of the parade grounds stands, surrounded by active Mage Knights sat the Mage King himself, his sons, and…

            _And Bezel_. All of them looked out impassively over the class of graduates with varying levels of disinterest and polite distance. The king scanned the rows of the newest mages as if sizing them up for their potential. His sons, the two princes Desmond and Jorran Lantea both looked as though they wanted to be anywhere else but here while the Superintendent had been droning on. Bezel was older now, but her bright green eyes and her fiery red hair were unmistakable. The recruit couldn’t help but look down briefly at himself and try to imagine how he used to look, compared to now. He was taller than before, he’d have to be. His voice had deepened some. He had muscles now. But his dark hair still went wild when it grew out enough to escape the short-cropped cut they made all the recruits get, and his eyes were the same sky blue and gray that let him remember his mother when he looked into the mirror.

            He still had trouble smiling, because there was so little to smile about.

 

            And then the class valedictorian, Milas Whins, cleared his throat and started speaking. There came the usual greetings and platitudes and gratifications. The pomp and ceremony of verbal kow-towing to the Mage King, to the Order, to Atlantis as a whole. He spoke of the tragedy of three years before, dredging up old memories and trying to revive them into fresh insults. The recruit tuned him out, because he thought of that day too often already.

            Whins’ speech was something that could have been churned out by rote, by a machine that spliced together lines from a thousand other graduation speeches. It was only at the end that the recruit snapped back to attention, when Whins brought the speech to its end that he started to pay attention again.

            He listened, and felt every hair on his body rise on its end.

 

            “The deaths of Prince Greeve, his wife and son, and everyone else who attended that fateful parade three years ago has put the state of Terra into new profile. Once, the Mage Knights of Atlantis needed only to stand as the aegis against the other peoples of the universe, the things between soil and void. Now, the people of Below have become our enemies as well. If we are to secure the peace that the Order has always guaranteed, we must stand strong. We must hold the line. We must pursue our enemies with dogged tenacity, and ensure that they _never_ threaten the stability of Atlantis ever again. Atlantis is the shield of the world! When that goes forgotten, when gratitude stumbles and fades, then the people of Below are children that must be disciplined. Brought to heel. As we take our first steps forward in the Order, I shall hold that pledge hard to my heart. My oath is to the Mage King. His enemies are my enemies. Atlantis is my home, and it _will be defended._ ”

            The gathered audience clapped, and even the other graduates broke parade rest at a gesture from the marshal to meet his words with favor.

            The recruit felt something terribly wrong in Milas Whins’ words as the Mage King himself rose to his feet and applauded the speech.

            They were a shield for all of Terra. Not just Atlantis. At least, that was what his history texts had said. The recruit wondered when that had changed. Or why it should.

            Through it all, he looked up at Princess Bezel Lantea who sat there emotionlessly, a living doll that clapped politely, reflexively. She was so different from the girl he held in his precious memories. It had been three years, the cynical part of him said.

            Bezel never looked at him, even though his name had been announced. She hadn’t even reacted.

            Three years of his life, gone. He was fourteen now, a graduate of the Mage Knight Academy. No longer a boy. No longer a recruit.

            He was a squire.

 

***

 

            Princess Bezel left with her family after the ceremony. The Squire was given his first deployment orders, and he was surprised to recognize the name of his new commanding officer.

            _Knight Commander Alastair Sloane._

 

            The man’s peppered black and gray hair was more peppery than three years before, but he held himself no less proudly than he had in the Squire’s hospital room. If anything, he was even more menacing. He likely felt he had to be. He was in front of a troop of a dozen fresh faces.

            “You’ve graduated. Congratulations, squires.” He growled out, helmet on his head and a flicker of green fire dancing around his fingers before he waved it off. “My name is Knight Commander Alastair Sloane. I head the 242nd Rapid Response Division. Maybe some of you thought that you would be getting deployed to easy areas. To _safe_ positions, because your fathers are nobles, or because you think that there are favors that can be cashed in. Tough tits.”

            He’d said it for effect, and the Squire could see that more than a few of his fellow graduates had shifted uneasily. “You are _here_ because you had the marks and the talent for the work. And let’s get one thing clear; I give no shits about what caste you came from or who your daddies were. I give no shits where you fall in the Spectrum. I’ve known Blues that were useless softbrains and Reds that outlasted _everyone_ who dared to go up against them and laughed themselves sick while beating their enemies to death with their own severed limbs.”

Sloane walked up to the line of them and strolled the entire length, his arms behind his back and his head never turning away from them. Many flinched. The Squire didn’t.

            “Maybe some of you don’t know what you’re in for. Allow me to enlighten you. The Rapid Response Division is not like the rest of the Mage Knights. We don’t _sit still_ or _guard positions_. We are not a police force that manages day to day affairs. The RRD are the ones that the Order calls on when things go absolutely, terribly, _ball-clenchingly **wrong**_. When the creatures from other worlds try to sneak in and cause trouble, they call us. When the Veil thins enough that the _things_ between worlds are able to slip out and go searching in their hunger, we are deployed. You will see things that may drive you mad. There’s no shame in it, I’ve seen better, stronger men than you pubescent pud-pulling _pricks_ wash out because when things went wrong, and they _do go wrong_ , they couldn’t hack it. For those of you who manage to survive your first three month deployment, congratulations. A good tour with the RRD guarantees your career advancement. For those of you who don’t make it, maybe you’re better suited for logistics or supply.”

            He caught the Squire’s eyes, and though it was faint and he might have imagined it, the Squire thought that just for a second, Knight Commander Sloane’s hard eyes softened.

            Then the moment was gone, Sloane turned his head, and kept on walking.

           

            “Pack up your supplies and report back in half an hour. We’re headed below to one of our outposts on Aroca.” The men hesitated, and Sloane smirked. “I see the training’s done its job. None of you jumped up.” The smile faded. “They beat that into you, and I’m going to have to beat it back out again. Down there, where the real work begins? Hesitation gets people killed. If you’re lucky, it’ll only get your own stupid ass killed instead of everyone around you. Dismissed. Except for you two.” He pointed a hand at the Squire, and another at Milas Whins.

 

            The Squire and Whins looked at one another, and Whins sneered a little as everyone else filed out. It disappeared from his face as soon as Sloane turned back around to address them.

            “You two ended up as the Valedictorian and the second in your class. Your instructors feel that the both of you have the right set of skills, talent, and leadership to go places in the Order. You’ll get a chance soon enough. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be seeing just how well you and the rest of the squires manage in the RRF. The position of squad leader will be up for grabs. Impress your lieutenants, impress me. We’ll see if either of you has what it takes.” And then Sloane scowled. “I’ve skipped over the most promising candidates and given it to diamonds in the rough before, so don’t think the post is yours just for the taking. Any questions?”

            “No sir!” Both Whins and the Squire answered back quickly.

            “Then get your gear together. We’ve got places to be.” Sloane waved a hand at them and turned around. Whins gave the Squire another hard glare before sniffing and walking out of the room.

 

            Sloane stood there in silence, and the Squire lingered.

            “Is there a problem, squire?”

            “No, sir.” The Squire answered reflexively, stiffening. Had Sloane forgotten about him as well?

            Then the old man chuckled and slipped off his helmet. “Just decided to stick around and poke the bear, kid?” Sloane turned and smiled at him.

            The Squire felt the tension leave his shoulders, and he chuckled softly. “I was...worried you might not remember me. Sir.”

            “The kid who channeled an incineration wave _untrained_ and saved the princess?” Sloane raised an eyebrow. “Doubtful. I told you I’d try to keep a spot open, didn’t I? I don’t make a lot of promises. The ones I do, I uphold. But I can’t do you any favors. You’ve come this far on your own. You did well enough I was able to pull you into my command.”

            “Why?”

            “Why what?”

            “Why did you want me in your unit?”

            “To keep you out of trouble, for one.” Sloane answered. “And second? I needed to figure out just what your intentions were.”

            “My intentions, sir?”

            “You joined up for a reason.” Sloane pointed out. “Is it still the same?”

            And the Squire’s first impulse was to immediately blurt out that _yes, of course_ it was still the same. That he’d joined up for _her_ , to _protect her_ , but…

            But Bezel had been like a statue in the stands, not really there, pristine and separate and beautiful the way a painting was beautiful, because you couldn’t touch a painting or hug it or play games with it. You could only ever look at it.

            Sloane sighed. “Relax, kid. I can see the gears grinding in your head. It’s just something to think about. Now get going. The trip down to Aroca’s going to be a short hop, but you’ll be worn out afterwards.”

 

***

 

_Portstand Rapid Response Division Encampment_

_Dalum Province, Aroca_

_The Below_

 

It was said that humanity’s origin came from within the heart of the jungles at the center of Aroca, but the true origin of power on Aroca these days was found in Dalum Province, which stretched from the Midworld Sea along the eastern coastline of Aroca, and concluded along the banks of the Great Aroca River. At the end, along muddy river deltas full of trees and fertile lowland farms was the provincial capital of Zolim. Portstand, however, stood much further upriver, situated to take advantage of the freshwater and to ferry troops and messages downstream without exhausting the more mana-intensive options of skyships and translocation circles.

            Knight Commander Sloane ran twelve squads, 4 full strike teams in the 242nd Rapid Response Division. The Squire’s squad lieutenant was a dark-skinned woman with a long, red scar down the side of her cheek that went up into her hairline. Her name was Freska Baynes, and the first thing she’d done after introducing herself was to plant one uppity jackass who questioned how a _woman_ could lead them into the ground facefirst. Without magic. She kept it cut short in military style even though she had the option, by her rank, of growing it out to personal preference. She never smiled, and made it her personal mission in life to make everyone as miserable as possible through extensive training that usually resulted in bruising and the occasional broken bone.

            _“You plebes can bleed in training or bleed out there in the fight, and you had better not bleed in the middle of a fight or I will **by mana cauterize your wounds shut with my bare hands!** If you’ve got enough air to complain, you’ve got enough air to run another klick!”_

            The Squire kept his head down, his mouth shut, and endured. If he’d proven one thing to himself over the past three years and some odd number of days, it was that he could endure almost anything. Almost.

            The training was hard, but he welcomed it. Lieutenant Baynes was a firm believer in self-improvement, and while only sword and magic practice was mandatory ( _“Fragging Regs”_ , she’d muttered once), she offered electives in other areas. Which was how the Squire found himself dressed in form-fitting physical training garments, with his arm being twisted around and being lifted up and…

            _Ow._

            He blinked and looked up at the ceiling from the mat that was never quite soft enough to not hurt.

            “You’re dead again, kid.” Lieutenant Baynes snorted. “You lasted five seconds longer, though. Keep this up, you might actually have enough time to write a will first.”

            “Again.” The Squire exhaled, ignoring the pain and pushing himself up off of the floor.

            “Later.” Baynes dismissed the idea of another match. “I’ve got reports to work on, and as much as I enjoy cleaning the floor with your face, you could use a break. You want to train more, fine. Just make it something _mental_. I catch you in the gym before tomorrow, I’ll give you a reason not to come back for a week. We clear, squire?”

            “Perfectly clear, Lieutenant Baynes.” The Squire paused, considering his options. “Do you think I should learn Arocan?”

            Baynes grabbed a towel for herself and _threw_ a second one at his face. “You asking me, or your lieutenant?”

            “...Both?” The Squire guessed uneasily, pulling the towel off of his head.

            “Lieutenant Baynes would tell you not to bother. Atlantean is the official language of the state, taught the world over.” The scarred woman who could beat every last one of them in spite of only having a yellow aura immediately said. But the Squire had heard a catch in that sentence, and so…

            “And what do _you_ say?” He asked her. And Lieutenant Baynes finally cracked a smile. Maybe. She wasn’t frowning as hard anyways, so it was probably the same thing.

            “It’s good to learn the language of wherever you’re working. Makes your life easier in the long run, even if the high mucky-mucks on high would consider it a waste of time.” She finished wiping the sweat out of her scalp and off of her arms and bare midsection. “The camp cook’s Arocan. A lot of the base personnel in sanitation and cooking are; frees up our guys for supply and keeping the place running. I’d go with him. But offer to trade him a favor for it. Arocans are keen on bartering.”

            “I’ll remember that. Thank you, lieutenant.”

            “Carry on, squire.” Baynes threw her own towel in the hamper beside the door on her way out, not even bothering to change to her standard uniform. The Squire however, felt the need to. He was still under the microscope.

 

            The Squire had showered and was putting on his armor when his least favorite person on the entire base walked in; Milas Whins. He was everything the Squire wasn’t. Fair-haired, statuesque features, an upper torso that flexed with raw power from constant upper body workouts and a childhood of healthy eating. Beyond healthy eating. He was a few inches taller than the Squire and never let him forget it. Just like he was doing right now, in point of fact.

            “Hey, washout.” Whins started with his favorite insult as he came in, stripping off his fencing gear. He was better than the Squire at swordplay, was trained in the classical styles from a young age.

            “Whins.” The Squire went to reach for the last piece of his armor in the changing room’s locker he’d been using, and snapped his hand back when Whins slammed the door shut on him. “Problem?”

            “You’re my problem, washout.”

            “I placed second in our class, Whins. I’m hardly a washout.”

            “If you’re not first, you’re not anything.” The blonde-haired boy sneered, and Whins wondered for a moment if he believed that on his own or if he’d been fed that line from a young age. “I caught the end of that spar with the lieutenant. You’re still getting your raggedy, Below-er ass beaten. You’d be better off practicing your swordplay and your magic and not bothering with the rest.”

            _And what about when you lose your sword?_ The Squire wanted to snap back at him. _Or when you exhaust your own mana, and you don’t have the time to concentrate and siphon more from the living world around you?_ But he didn’t ask either of those questions. He’d learned long ago that there wasn’t a point. Whins would rant and rave and ignore anything that didn’t fit his schema.

            “Whatever it is you think you’re doing, you can forget about it. It won’t help you land the position of squad leader.” Whins snapped, and the Squire merely smiled and opened his locker back up, retrieving the greaves he still was missing.

            “Then you don’t have anything to worry about, do you?” The Squire said, and went for the door. He paused before walking out, looking back at Whins who was stripping off his leggings next. “Unless you’re afraid I’m _better_ than you.”

            “Keep dreaming, washout.” Whins said, giving him a rude gesture. The Squire rolled his eyes and walked away.

            Whins at least knew better than to get in a fight with him, as much as he hated the Squire’s guts. The last time he’d tried, he had two of his Academy goons as backup, and Whins had still ended up with a black eye and a split lip.

            The Squire had suffered much more severe bruising and contusions, but the price had been worth it just for how much it had slowed up the evening beatings.

 

***

 

            Lieutenant Baynes had been correct about the Arocan love of the barter system; the cook had agreed to teach him conversational Arocan in exchange for two weeks’ worth of assistance in the kitchen. To the Squire’s surprise, he found he wasn’t horrible at peeling tubers and making soup.

            “You’re getting better.” The cook chuckled, shaking his head in a way that let the Squire know that he meant, _but you still sound terrible._ “The glottal stops are tripping you up still. That will come with practice.”

            “My lieutenant said that I should pick up the local tongues wherever I’m stationed.”

            “She is a wise woman.” The cook nodded, rubbing a thumb over the dark skin of his wrist. “Hers is not a common opinion, though. I am heartened that she is trying to pass it on to her subordinates. Trying to teach Arocan to a willing student? And in the Mage Knights, no less? It is a joy.”

            The Squire blinked at that, pausing in his work. “If it is a joy, then why did I barter for the opportunity?”

            “Because you think better when you give your hands something to do.” The cook said. “And there is no better place to learn a language than in the kitchen.” He set another peeled root vegetable into the pot and reached for the next on the stack, and when he leaned forward, the Squire caught sight of something underneath his sleeve.

            “What is that?”

            “Hm? Oh, this?” The cook pulled his sleeve back after the Squire gestured to it, and a small wooden bracelet about his lower forearm came fully into view. “It is my _depapas_.” At the Squire’s blank look, the Arocan smirked. “A bracelet exchanged between lovers.” He tilted his arm over closer to the young Squire so he could make out strange marks wholly distinct from Atlantean burnished into the finished wood. “A man carves the bracelets as a pair and gives them to his mate. She, or occasionally he as the heart follows, then burns markings into the wood to give representation of them both. This mark here is mine; _The laughing heart._ And this mark was the one my wife chose for herself, _The Steady Stone._ For I am the laughter that brings joy to those around me, and she is the rock that weathers the storms of life.” He smiled and pulled his sleeve back. “Of course, I am sure that you Atlanteans have a similar tradition.”

            The Squire tried to think back of what he remembered about courtship rituals on Atlantis. The rich would give rings or necklaces, but only ever from the husband to the wife. It was a mark of ownership more than _belonging_.

            His mother had never worn anything like that. Maybe they had been too poor to afford it, but she held onto things with sentimental value. Even the terrible pictures he’d drawn as a boy.

            “I don’t think we do.” The Squire answered the cook, and they kept on peeling.

 

***

 

            For a solid month, the Squire and the rest of his squad continued to train. Whins continued to distinguish himself in both swordplay and his magical skill, not terribly surprising given that as a Blue on the magical spectrum, he was the strongest of the twelve members. He still defeated the Squire in both of those areas, but in everything else…

            In everything _else_ , the Squire outmatched him. And yet, in the end, it had been _Whins_ who had received the appointment of squad leader. Knight Commander Sloane hadn’t minced words when he’d called the Squire into his office one day after the announcement was made. He’d merely poured a small snifter of potent distilled spirits across his desk to the boy, lifted a glass of his own with a far more substantial serving, and told him why the decision had come down that way.

            In the end, Sloane, with complete disregard to his rank, his years of service, and his authority over every squad stationed at Portstand, had been sent a missive from the Knight General. A missive that had informed him, in as between the lines as a direct order could come, that Milas Whins was to be promoted to squad leader. Word had gotten out of his skill in blade and magic, and more importantly, his _family_ had been asking about it.

            Nepotism, in the end, had beaten out every other virtue.

 

            **Don’t get angry over the things you can’t change, my Precious One.**

 

            Years later, and he still had trouble following that one rule of his mother’s. So the Squire and Sloane had drank their liquor and let their bodies burn as much as their throats did. Sloane drank for being reminded how little power he actually had when it came to decisions about _promotion_ , and the Squire drank and raged about how the world hadn’t changed at all. 

            His first missions were simple ones; rounding up foreign smugglers from the worlds beyond Terra who had tried to sneak in past Atlantis’ watch. The decent ones had merely been trying to sneak the grains and vegetables and livestock that Terra was famous for. The dishonorable ones had tried to make off with _people._ They stopped them all, with the sundries smugglers being arrested for deportation proceedings. The slavers? They never got the chance for a trial, and the Squire felt no guilt over it. The _exenos_ , a word he’d picked up in the Eurosian dialect from Lieutenant Baynes, had marvelous ships that could sail through the sky and through the void beyond, and weapons that could shoot fire and metal and lightning. None of it did them any good against the power of a trained Mage Knight...or a full squad of squires. Even with Whins acting as squad leader, being a complete and total _ass_ with only the lieutenant to keep him in line, they were starting to build a sense of cohesiveness. A sense of belonging.

            The aches and the hurts in his heart were too numerous for the Squire to count any longer, but he had found purpose. He’d found a place to call his own.

            The Squire should have remembered just how impermanent everything in the world really was.

 

***

 

_Sky Skiff 9, 242nd RRD_

_Enroute to Zolim_

 

 

            The Sky Skiffs were a marvel of form and function; they were ships that looked as though they would be as comfortable slicing through the waves of the oceans as they would the blue and white skies of Terra, but they sported no sails. They had massive wings, fragile constructs of latticed manaweave metal that drew in power from the currents of mana in the living earth and fed it to the engines, the steering, and the antigravity runes. Two full squads could fit on every ship, and while they lacked weapons, with that many trained warriors aboard, offense and defense were hardly an issue.

            They were all dressed in full kit, and the Squire felt the same frission of nervousness that the rest of his squad did. Lieutenant Baynes had her war face on, and had even added paint to supplement her open-faced helmet. There was significance in the lines, but she had never shared them. Then the speakers droned to life, and the voice of Knight Commander Sloane, who was stationed on a different skiff, echoed in their ears.

            _“Approximately 1 hour ago, the Aegis Sensors detected an enormous buildup of mana in Dalum Province. Five minutes after, an emergency distress signal was dispatched from the Order’s district headquarters in Zolim, but it only repeated for ten seconds before going dark.”_

And if that wasn’t troublesome, the Squire didn’t know what was. He felt the hair on the back of his neck go up and managed to keep his focus.

            _“We are flying into an unknown situation, and that’s why you were ordered into full kit. Zolim has gone **dark** , and something is very, very wrong. Team 1 will be deploying to the provincial estate. Team 2 will move to ascertain the status of Mage Knight district headquarters, and offer assistance as needed. Team 3 will head to the upper city for search and rescue, and Team 4 will do the same for the lower city.”_

Team 4 was the strike force that the Squire’s squad was a part of, which meant that they had the most space to cover, but the fewest number of ‘critical assets’ to protect. The lower castes outnumbered the higher by a factor of 3 to 1, but the value on their lives…

            _“Stay with your teams. Remember your training. Stay in contact. And may mana preserve us all.”_

            The farspeaker went silent, and Lieutenant Baynes filled the emptiness with her own shrill voice. “All right, you heard the man! Put your game faces on and don’t take them off. We’re touching down in five minutes!”

            The Squire was close to one edge of the skiff, and he leaned out over the side to stare on ahead. In the distance, along the Great Aroca River, lay the sprawl of buildings that marked Zolim.

            He could only see the tops of it. The rest was engulfed in dark, shadowy smoke.

 

***

 

_Zolim_

_Lower Section_

 

 

            They’d been out on the ground and patrolling for less time than it had taken them to reach Zolim after Sloane’s briefing for everything to go to hell. It hadn’t been _smoke_ that had covered Zolim, they discovered right after they touched down. It had been fog. And after they charged into it, that was when the screaming started.

            And the voices. Not the voices from their communications spells that every one of them knew how to cast, no. Those had all broken as soon as the fog had touched them, the last thing that the Squire heard being the panicked voice of Knight Commander Sloane demanding all the teams to _report_. The voices…

            Everyone in their squad _panicked_. They’d trained to fight monsters. To fight _exenos_. To, if need be, even fight other people. But you couldn’t fight voices.

            And Lieutenant Baynes’ face was locked in a rictus of terror, and she was shaking.

            _“You brought more sacrifices to the slaughter? Oh, you’re so **thoughtful,** Freska...But then, you always were. So happy to let others do the dying for you.”_

“Shut up.” The lieutenant whispered. “Shut up. _Shut up_.”

            And then the voice in the fog changed, to a dying, raspy wheeze of some man. _“Why’d you do it, Freska? Why did you leave us? We **died** waiting for you!”_

            “Sir!” The Squire grabbed her by the arm, and shook her hard, and when she snapped to him, the terror was still there. It took her seconds to recognize him. “Lieutenant!”

            “Code Violet.” Freska Baynes wheezed, and the Squire stumbled back. He felt fear at last.

            Code Violet. A threat of the highest caliber. Engage in force or retreat and call down the full fury of Atlantis to sanitize the area completely. They had no business dealing in a Code Violet. They weren’t ready. None of them could ever _hope_ to be ready for this. He didn’t know what it was, but his lieutenant, a woman who ate pig iron and spat out nails, was trembling like a leaf.

            The voices kept going, a hundred different whispers in the wind, and then he heard the screams cutting through the fog. Screams of pain, and sick gurgles, as if clawing their way out of mutilated throats.

            “Fall back!” The lieutenant screamed. “It’s The Liar! Fall back! Get out of the fog!” She tore out of the Squire’s hand and fled in the other direction. She made it thirty feet before an enormous lumbering shape on four legs, as large as a horse and horribly unnatural, scrambled along the rooftops and lunged towards her in a silent pounce that split the fog. Then there was the sound of a wet impact and bones breaking as the fog swirled around it, and the dying, screaming form of his lieutenant, and…

            _And chewing._

 

            The rest of his squad pulled in together, their hands on their swords. Only half of them used shields; Whins used one. The Squire favored a double-handed style that allowed him to revert to one-handed if the occasion called for it.

            “Hold together!” Whins barked out the order, and his natural smug air of command almost made it sound like he wasn’t intimidated. He forced his blue aura up around his hand and channeled it into his blade. “Fire! Don’t give it a chance to recover!”

            Nine rays of yellow, with two greens and one blue from Whins himself pierced through the shrouding fog around the lumbering shape of the fell beast that had made a snack of their lieutenant, and the thing reeled up and _squealed_ in a shrill cry that made the Squire wince and want to cover his ears. Two of his squadmates did. The _thing_ charged for them and went for a clump of his squadmates who had dropped their swords to cup their ears. The Squire _lunged_ , and landed a wide gash into the thing’s side, forcing it to stop its charge and dive to the side, turning to look at him.

            It was a nauseating thing of rubbery, pallid flesh, its four legs were covered in broad clawed toes. But worst of all was its head, a lower half that split open like the petals of a flower to reveal two rows of serrated teeth coated in blood and gore, and four enormous eyes that shimmered with all the colors of a rainbow. It roared again, the squeal of a pig crossed with the whinnies of a horse and a goat that pierced the eardrums, and for a second, he wanted to vomit.

           

            **You’re so brave. Don’t ever stop being brave.**

 

            Somehow, the Squire found the strength to grip the hilt of his sword in both hands and suck in a breath of air into his lungs. It was fetid and damp and smelled like death, but he endured.

            Whins let out a scream of his own and raced past the Squire, unleashing another blast of power through the conductive manaweave of his sword’s core. The beast turned its head away from the blast, then brought a hand up, snapping it at Whins. Whins braced his shield…

            The thing’s claws carved through it like it was butter and knocked him flat on his ass, and the beast followed Whins. It reared up over the squad leader’s head, preparing to crush him.

            But then the Squire was leaping through the air on a mana-fueled jump and landing on the thing’s back, and he _drove_ his sword down through the thing’s skin and into where he hoped its spine would be. The beast squealed in pain and tried to buck him off, but the Squire had _trained_ for this. He dug his heels into the thing’s sides, clenched his legs as tightly as he could, and shoved his sword into the thing’s body until only the hilt remained. Until he wasn’t sure if he would ever be able to pull it back out again.

            And the beast spasmed and bucked five more times before letting out a piteous moan and collapsing on the ground.

            Silence, aside from the whispers in the misty air around them. Shaking, the Squire pulled himself up and tugged at his sword twice before it finally jerked free. He went over to Whins, who was still slumped on his ass and staring at the dead creature with wide eyes.

            “Squad leader.” The Squire said. Then, after a pause, he said it forcefully. “Squad leader!” Whins finally snapped back to himself and looked up at the Squire. “Sir, the lieutenant is dead. You’re in command. _What are your orders?_ ”

            The rest of their unit were all squires as well. They’d been deployed with a team of knights to support them, but they’d gotten split up and lost in the fog. They were just a dozen squires, ten boys and two girls. And one of them, Whins, a 15 year old _child_ , was in charge of them all.

            “We...we need to…” Whins gasped, looking around for his sword and shield. The sword he recovered, and he blanched further after seeing the broken remains of his shield. “I…”

            The Squire wanted to scream at him, slap him hard in the face. If Baynes was here, she would have done that. But Baynes had panicked first, and died.

            The Squire could feel other _things_ moving in around in the fog, keeping a wide berth of the squires, but prowling and watching. For now. If they broke ranks, if they…

            The Squire turned to the others, hanging on to their sanity by a thread. He wondered why they were all so afraid, so terrified. So frozen.

            It took him a moment to realize why. They’d never had to fight for their lives before.

           

            “We have to re-establish contact with the rest of Strike Team 4. With the other squads.” The Squire called out, not letting his voice waver. “That is first priority. Lieutenant Baynes is...is dead. We have to find a superior officer before we move on. Everyone close formation and stay together. We’re not alone out here.”

 

            Milas Whins was the squad leader, and a little over one year older than the Squire, but the rest of their unit had needed a strong voice of authority. They deferred to the Squire’s orders. Maybe they thought he knew how to keep them alive.

            The Squire hoped he could.

 

***

 

            Lieutenant Baynes had said _The Liar_ before she lost her mind, ran off calling for a retreat, and became a snack for the beast with kaleidoscopic eyes. The Squire tried to think back to their studies about the kinds of threats that they might encounter. There had been a lot said about the different varieties of _exenos_ that they might encounter. Of the ‘things beyond the Veil’, there had been significantly less for them to go over. Usually, it boiled down to two things; kill it with magical fire, and seal every rift you found. The Squire had been frustrated at the lack of information available at the Academy.

            Now, though, he began to wonder with dawning dread that perhaps there was a reason for it. That few Knights came back to pass on intelligence when things went this wrong.

            Their squad was moving as fast as they could safely. The pack of _things_ that he had felt moving around them in the fog had darted in closer, small and ominous shapes the size of wolves before they unleashed baleful screams and came in from all sides. Their formation and their training, and the Squire’s (and eventually Whins’s) shouted orders were all that kept them from immediately being overwhelmed.

            But as they batted off one creature after another that carried the same chromatic eyes and smaller, but no less dangerous versions of the terrible circular mouths, burning as many as they could, the susurrus of ominous whispers only intensified in the background of their senses. The Squire winced as one squadmate after another became disheartened, turned to scream or shout or beg forgiveness from people who weren’t actually there. As if their mothers, their fathers, their former lovers would be _here_ , in this hellish place.

            The Squire didn’t hear any of that. He wondered why. The only voice he could hear beyond that of his squadmates was a haunting, feminine voice full of power and cruelty, mocking and playful above it all.

            _“Oh, come on, children. Make it a **little** harder for me. I’m so **bored** when I can’t play with you all, where’s the fun if you don’t make me chase you around first?”_

            The Liar. Code Violet. And then another beast was on him, and he let out a scream and slashed out with a sword full of fire, and cleaved its head and a part of its shoulder off the rest of its body.

            “Hold together!” Whins shouted, even as the Squire almost cut him off by screaming, “Whatever those voices are telling you, _ignore them!_ They’re not real! They’re not here! It’s all a ruse, a distraction!”

            And the whispers stalled for a moment as the squad of squires finished carving up the last of the creatures attacking them, and…

            _“Ohhh. Oh my. Now **this one**...this one is **special**. Hello, boy.” _The voice purred, and the Squire felt it almost pressing in on him. He shivered, and said nothing. The Liar, Lieutenant Baynes had called it.

            He refused to call it a _her_.

 

            The fog was thick, but bolts of searing magic from their hands unclouded the air enough for them to make out the next street ahead of them. Enough for them to pick out the sight of bodies in the distance.

            Bodies that they recognized as belonging to the other squad that they were supposed to be paired with on this operation. All of them lay torn apart, bitten, clawed, shields rent and swords broken. One of the other squires whimpered and fell to his knees when they came across Lieutenant Bores, a softspoken Mage Knight of some experience who had smiled at them before they’d embarked on the sky skiffs and told them all he would see them soon. He wasn’t seeing anyone now. He was dead, and his eyes were gouged out by a massive claw mark that had shredded his nose as well. He would have been just a pile of meat if not for his badge and rank insignias. Another squire vomited at the massacre.

            And Whins screamed up at the sky. “Damn you! Damn you, you monsters! I’ll kill you all for invading!”

            _“Oh, you poor fool, little Whins.”_ The voice sighed, louder than before, and the whispers increased. _“You think I just came here? Oh, no no no nono. I was **invited**.”_ And it laughed in that high, reedy, feminine tone full of madness, and the Squire shivered again.

            Whins swallowed down air like he was drowning, and the Squire breathed as he felt the weight of that presence slide away from him. It must have settled on his squad leader instead. He turned to the rest of the men, as Whins was back to being his useless self again. “Spread out and look for survivors!” He ordered, and they jumped to the task, if only to give themselves something else to focus on besides that mad, mad voice.

             “No one would _dare_ allow such a monster into our world.” Whins wheezed, trapped in the conversation with the entity hidden in the mists.

            _“Oh, but they would, little fool with a sword.”_ The voice purred. _“They screamed for vengeance. They screamed for justice. They brought their power together, two hundred of the creatures that scurry in the filth of this world, and prayed for deliverance from tyranny. They wanted their enemies destroyed at any cost. And who would I be to refuse to help?”_ It was almost pitying for a moment before the fierce and insane glee came back, twice as strong as before. _“Of course, they never specified not to do the same to them afterwards. And I am so very, **very** lonely and hungry, after all.”_ And then it broke into a wild, piercing laugh.

            While Whins stood frozen in paralyzed horror at the revelations, the rest of the squad had broken up and spread out into the surrounding shacks and houses. One of the pairs came back with a family of four in tow; a father and mother, a girl that clutched at her mother’s hand and a little boy carried in the father’s arms. They were dressed in the threadbare rags that the Squire recognized all too easily; members of the lowest caste. The forgotten ones, who could not even find work at the Atlantean sponsored workhouses.

            The Squire sighed in relief, went over to them. He greeted them all in their native tongue and smiled when they all reacted, staring at him with _hope_.

            “What did you say to them?” Another squire, one of the two girls on their squad, asked.

            “Hello.” The Squire said, before reverting to Arocan. _“We have come to help. How many more survivors are around here?”_

            The father started to answer, but was cut off when a searing beam of heat blasted past the Squire and struck him dead in the chest, gouging a hole clean through him. Everyone screamed, even the other squires, and the Squire whirled about with sword in hand to defend the other Arocans from…

            From _Whins_. Their squad leader had one hand outstretched, the blue magic of his aura gathered around it. He had killed a civilian in cold blood, and the look in his eyes…

            And the Squire could hear the whispers around the young noble.

            _They brought the monster here, they’re all traitors to Atlantis, kill them kill them all, for the King’s justice, they aren’t worth saving…_

            Whins snarled. “Filthy animals. Gutter trash. All your fault. All your fault!” And he fired again…

            And the Squire was there, catching the blast on the edge of his empowered sword, deflecting it up and away. _“Hide!”_ He screamed to the surviving family members, and they did so.

            Whins’ focus shifted onto him, and the wild gleam deepened as the whispers changed.    

            _Another traitor to the King, traitor to Atlantis, he cares about the traitors, kill him kill him **kill him** **kill them all…**_

“Traitors, all of you.” Whins raved, and he hurled a wild wave of furious blue incineration away from him, towards the rest of his gathered unit.

            “Shields!” The Squire shouted, already throwing up a hasty one of his own. Only about half of the others managed to do so in time, or had shields strong enough to resist the incineration wave.

            The other half burned and screamed and died as the blue flames took them. The Squire screamed. Whins just smiled.

            “For my King. For Atlantis.” The squad leader whispered, and the mad voice in the fog laughed all the harder.

            And the Squire charged right at him. He was gone. He had given into the voice and the whispers, just like Baynes.

            No. The lieutenant had tried to run away. Whins just wanted to see it all burn.

 

            _“Oh, how precious!”_ The maddening voice that had to be The Liar crooned as Whins switched to a single-handed duelist’s style, easily blocking and deflecting the Squire’s charge. The Squire spun around and managed a wild backhand to block the stab meant for his spine, then danced out of reach of the lung that followed. _“Two squires, dueling over me? Is it my birthday already? Put on a good show, boys!”_

            It was a duel, and Whins had always beaten the Squire in their duels. Nobody else in their Academy class ever had. The son of Atlantean nobility had lived with a blade since he’d been young. The Squire hadn’t picked one up until the Academy.

            While the rest of the squad hung back, shields raised, Whins and the Squire fought with magic, wild blasts that burned and drilled. Their swords glowed with green and blue light, with Whins using his power to great effect. The Squire’s armguards bore the tattered marks of nearly a dozen close calls he’d shoved clear at the last second, and there was a thin graze along his midsection, where Whins had snuck a blow between the plates of his armor.

            In a one on one fencing duel, or a contest of raw power output, Whins would always win. But the Squire had fought for higher odds before. He was fighting for them now.

            It was survivor’s instinct, and he used every scrap of training Baynes had forced into him through one grueling training session after another. He didn’t just fight sword to sword and blast to blast. He ducked and weaved, leading Whins on a chase. He blindsided the older boy with kicks that came out of nowhere and dirty fighting techniques that he’d learned on the streets of Below, and had improved on in the Academy. He fought to get Whins angry, to keep him off balance. It wasn’t even that hard. Whins hadn’t been balanced since they’d deployed. It was much worse now.

            It didn’t make it easy; the Squire was exhausted when the opportunity came. A lunge that just _barely_ overextended, and he danced inside of the thrust, their swords scraping against one another long enough for the Squire to grab hold of his wrist, twist, spin around.

            _Like water_ , he remembered how Baynes put it. Water flowed. One leg around behind, a bump to the back of the knee. Whins’ stance broken, his wrist, twisted and the sword released. And then the Squire _yanked_ , and Whins was flung over his shoulder, slammed to the ground…

            Stunned long enough for the knight to bring his sword up and plunge it down through the older boys’ throat, the most visible soft spot available to him. There was a gagging noise, and a splash of blood, and…

            And Whins expired, and the Squire lived.

            Too late for five of his squadmates, taken in the rampage. Too late for a civilian.

 

            The voice laughed again, but this time, the Squire froze, for it had finally settled into a voice he remembered. _“My precious boy.”_

            It took one of the other squires shaking his arm to snap him out of it. “What do we do now, sir?” The mage asked him worriedly. “Can we...can we even _escape_ this?”

            The Squire thought about it, and the voice used the silence.

            _“Oh, you and I are going to have such fun. Bring your friends if you like. I’ll want a snack before I finish with you.”_

            And then the whispers slowed, the voice disappeared. For the moment. The Squire turned to the rest, all of whom stared at Whins’ cooling body with disgust, and who looked at him in desperate hope.

            “The only way out of this mess is to stop the entity causing it.” The Squire said, and knew it was right, even for how hopeless it might truly be.

            A Code Violet. Half a squad of squires to stand in its way.

            But there was no going back. There were survivors, and they could not be rescued, or led out of the fog. The rest of their strike team was missing or dead. Nobody else could help them now.

            The Squire took up Whins’ blade in his free hand and sheathed his own.

            “We’re moving out.” He said wearily, and trudged in the direction where the fog thinned. The Liar was inviting them into its parlor.

            Nothing for it but to spring the trap.

 

***

 

            They were followed the entire way. More of the small doglike creatures trailed them from the rooftops, and in the distance, the Squire could make out the heavier footsteps of larger things, perhaps more of the fell beast that had killed the lieutenant. They were either being escorted, or herded, and both were terrible possibilities.

            And the whispers had come back. The other squires were hanging on by a thread, but they were hanging on. They just kept looking at the Squire for support, for reassurance, and saw him march on. He didn’t know if he was making a face at all. He tried to keep his face as blank as possible, because the whispers took on the voices of the people that you were close to, if the reactions of the others were anything to go off of. But the Squire must not have had enough people in his life for the whispers, which had to come from The Liar, to dig in hard enough.

            _“You let me die. I trained you, gave you the skills to survive, and you let me die.”_ The voice said in Lieutenant Baynes’ hard, accusing contralto.

            “You ran. You turned your back and never saw the attack coming.” The Squire murmured under his breath.

            _“Squad leader at last, washout. You must be pleased with yourself. You finally have everything you ever wanted, and you just had to murder me to make it happen.”_ It tried next, in Whins’ voice.

            The Squire snorted at that attempt to get under his skin. “You only cared about yourself. Nobody will mourn you, nobody that matters. And you know _nothing_ about what I want.”

 

            The third whisper was a bit closer to the mark, and his steps slowed for half a second before he picked up into a steadier jog, pulling out Whins’ sword and kept going. _“You’re a real piece of work, kid. You think you stand a chance? You’re just a squire! This thing eats **Knights** and comes out laughing. You should have run when you had the chance.”_

“You would never have recruited me if I was the kind of man who ran _away_ from danger.” The Squire growled, and ignored everything else that the thing using Sloane’s voice sputtered out. After that third failed attempt, the whispers turned away from him and focused on the others. He thought that it had given up on playing mind games with him.

 

            They all skidded to a halt once they reached a courtyard in the Zolim slums, and he realized with a scream that it wasn’t the case.

            The Liar sat on a throne of bones still slick with fluids, an honor guard of terrible beasts flanked around her. And she sat there, smugly, smirking down at them in the form of a living goddess with a crown of lustrous red curls and smoky emerald eyes, in a low-cut blood red dress that revealed just a glimmer of the treasures beneath the fabric.

            Princess Bezel Lantea.

 

            “My _heroes_.” She purred, and reached a slender, sleeved arm down to the beast seated off her right hand. She petted it, and the thing leaned into her touch with an aching croon. “So brave. Torn apart, more than decimated, your numbers reduced by half. Mere squires, when they should have sent entire squads of heart-hardened killers with no levers to come and put me down.” She laughed at that, and for a moment, the green in her eyes flickered and gave the impression of _mouths_ , _mouths full of gnashing, screaming teeth_ , and then they were back to normal.

            Normal, in that it was a lie for what was really underneath. The Squire tasted acid in the back of his throat, swallowed it back down.

            “You’re not her.” One of the other squires stammered out, holding his sword low and level, a good defensive position. “You have _no right_ to take the form of our princess!”

 

            “Excuse me?” The Liar laughed in Bezel’s sweet voice, still sounding as she had when he’d been eleven, even though her appearance was her at thirteen. “What do you mean, _‘our princess?’_ You think I wear this skin for you?” Those false eyes drifted over to the Squire, and her cruel smirk deepened. “Only _one_ of you dreams enough of her for me to mimic her form.”

            It was meant to sting. It was meant to be agony. The Squire gripped his sword tighter and managed not to scream back at the thing in the false skin of a girl who had not bothered to visit him in years. “It’s trying to distract you. Don’t let it win.”

            “Your new leader _is_ right, you know.” The thing in Bezel’s skin went on with a haughty sigh. “It is a distraction. But it’s one made with good intentions. You poor Terrans, you’re just so _fragile_.” It examined Bezel’s hand for a few long moments. One of the other squires got the bright idea to attack while it was distracted, and a burning beam of yellow light shot towards it.  One of the guard beasts around her jumped in front of the blast and took it with a yelp of pain, and The Liar looked back down, irritation plain on her face. “Dirty pool. There’s _rules_ to this, you know! And the first rule?” Then she shot her hand out towards the squire, and to everyone’s surprise, the human hand and arm disappeared for a long, whiplike tendril with a blurry mass of fingerlike protrusions on the end. It was the work of less than a second for that grotesque limb to rip the squire’s throat out, and the boy fell dying, choking on his own blood.

            They all snapped into sturdier defensive postures, but the thing wearing Bezel’s shape merely pulled its arm back, reverted to its normal appearance, and glowered at them all.

            “ _Never_ interrupt me while I’m monologuing.” Her glare vanished for a grin right after. “I get so few opportunities to do so, after all!”

            “Take that face off!” The Squire snarled. “It does not belong to you! You are not _her!_ ”

            “Am I not?” The Liar questioned far too innocently. “Has she not lied to you as well? The princess you threw yourself into servitude for?”

            And then another whisper burned at his ear. _“You were so surprised that I remembered you. But I didn’t really. I just needed someone to save me, someone willing to throw their life away for me. And there you were, gullible, worthless you. No one will care when you die here, boy. You’re no Squire. You’re no recruit. You’re just a boy, a worthless boy with no name. You don’t even see yourself as deserving of a name, you exist through titles alone.”_

The Liar had finally found an arrow that hit home, and he felt his eyes burn at the edges. He forced it down, took in a shuddering breath. The Squire hefted the sword of a useless squad leader who had fallen to madness and slain an innocent, and invoked the ancient words.

              He conjured up his magic as he spoke them, infused them with power, felt it reach out and wrap around The Liar as a Geas, purchased at the risk of his life. If he perished, the spell would fade. If he triumphed, the entity would be driven away.

            The thing in Bezel’s form hissed and flinched as the magic covered her like a shroud, and there was finally a flash of real anger out of her.

            “You’re just a _squire_.” She snarled back at him. “Not even a full Knight yet. You dare to bind me with your power? You think it will hold?”

            “I took an oath.” The Squire replied, and smiled at her discomfort. “Rank matters not.”

 

            The Liar stared at him for several seconds, then broke out laughing. “Oh, you _are_ different. You don’t break like my other toys did. Not yet. And you’re so hard to get a _read_ on. It’s like nothing matters to you, like nobody does!” She got up from her throne and clapped her hands, and the fell beasts all around her let out a bloodcurdling howl and ran off into the fog. “Oh, don’t disappoint me, my unbroken boy. _Please_ don’t disappoint me, it’s been so _long_. My pets will make sure we won’t be bothered.” Her eyes gleamed, and she knocked her throne of bones aside with a wave of her hand, scattering the debris across the street.

            “Four squires and an unbroken boy.” The thing that looked like Bezel licked her lips, and then…

            Everything went _fuzzy_ , and she shifted and changed, and Bezel disappeared. The monster underneath took her place, and the last surviving girl squire on the squad dropped her sword howling and clawed her own eyes out.

            The Squire felt his heart seize in his chest at the sight of the true abomination. Where one would expect eyes, there were mouths. It towered twice as high as he stood, easily three full heads above even Sloane, a slavering mess of mouths, mouths, _mouths everywhere_ , on the fingertips and in the palms of hands that extended from slender whiplike arms, over its chest, over its _feet_. Around its head lay a sickening crown of ten eyes, eyes that looked everywhere and saw everything.

            Saw into their _minds_ , tore out the essence of their doubts and fears…

            And whispered them all back from a hundred mouths over its body.

            Another squire vomited at the sight, and only two came up to stand beside the Squire, to hold the line.

            The whispers promised their deaths, vowed untold suffering.

            “Remember your training.” The Squire whispered, and channeled power into his feet, into his arms, into his aura until it swirled around him as a living spell of preternatural reaction and speed that he would need to stand against the eldritch horror that lived in the darkness between worlds.

            The Liar howled and charged at them, and the battle was met.

 

***

 

            They had trained to fight _exenos_ , they had touched on things beyond the Veil. They had been a part of the RRF for only a month, and they were fighting a _thing_ that was a top tier threat. They fought it because there was nobody else _left_. They fought The Liar because they had sworn an oath.

            They fought it to survive, and all it took was the space of two minutes for the eldritch horror to eliminate every other squire but him. The thing laughed the entire time as its twisted limbs tore, broke, and ate.

            And ate.

 

            The Squire screamed, locked between sheer terror and a dogged need to endure. In desperation, he’d pulled out his own sword and switched from a double-handed grip to a twin-bladed style, rough and unpracticed. Whins’ thinner blade was meant for lunges and stabs and to deflect. His own sword was heavier, slower, with a sharp edge intended to slash. With the foil in his off-hand and his own held in his main as he kept magic infused in both, he blunted and deflected and worked his way around the whiplike strikes that kept him at a distance.

            All of the whispers turned on him; there was nobody else left for them to torture. The Liar danced, and he raced to keep up. To keep up was to survive. And yet, the Squire still felt like she was just _playing_ with him.

            “So young. So delicious.” Saliva drooled from its largest mouth beneath its crown of eyes, even as rubbery flesh snapped out, coming back singed from the magic he pumped into the swords. Grazing blows only made it flinch, and it chased him through the streets. “So full of _pain_. You’ve suffered terribly, boy. So much heartbreak. Why fight for them? Why fight for _anyone_ in this world? I see the same darkness that my summoners had within you!” It lashed out with another lightning-quick whipstrike, broke through his guard. He felt teeth _grabbing_ at his armor, heard the squeal as the metal was shredded like an axe through wood. “They hated it just as you do. The imbalance. The inequality! What are you, what have you become? Nothing more than a puppet, a disposable _weapon_ for Atlantis to use.”

 

 _“A weapon for **me** to use.” _The whispers said in Bezel’s soft voice, one he still heard perfectly three years later. _“A weapon to be sacrificed. You did it to yourself, I didn’t even have to ask you! Your mother died to save me, you almost died to save me, and when you were free, your power discovered? You walked right back into the blaze to **burn** for me!”_

            “You think that I would let you past me for that?” The Squire screamed at the monster, and adrenaline allowed him to finally see an opening. He fused even more of his strength into Whins’ blade until it screamed green, and when the hand with its palm and the mouth inside raced for him, he shoved the sword down into the maw and kept pushing.

            The sword and the magic that infused the edges of the thin tang split the Liar’s rubbery limb clean down the middle and blew the shredded strips out and away from him. The shrieks that came from its mouths were deafening. The Liar pulled back, left with nothing but a stump trailing cauterized streamers.

            The Squire wondered if it could feel fear as keenly as he did. It gave him time to swallow down air, check his mana, make sure that he wasn’t bleeding. “You don’t _care_ about anyone.” He growled at the creature, and somehow kept his eyes on it without going faint, or getting sick, or going mad. The image burned into his brain nonetheless, and he knew if he were to close his eyes, he’d still see it. “They wanted to be _saved_ , and you just used them to make a door into our world. I didn’t put on this armor for Atlantis!”

            The Liar hissed angrily, and used its other arm to shear away the ruined tatters of its first one, leaving a bloody stump behind. And then it laughed.

            “Oh, you are right, my unbroken boy. You didn’t become the Squire for Atlantis. But you didn’t do it for these people either, did you? You did it for _her_.”

 

            _“Like I would notice just another soldier.”_ The twisted voice of Bezel scoffed with a cruelty that no child’s voice deserved. _“So I visited you. Do you think I **wanted** to? You were the peasant who saved a Princess. Protocol demanded it. And I haven’t come for you since, have I? I couldn’t even bear to look at you! Didn’t your mother teach you properly? You never associate with someone above your caste, or beneath it! The miserable witch deserved to die for raising such a disobedient son!”_

            It hurt to hear it said, but…

 

            **Don’t let anyone tell you that you’re not important. That you don’t matter.**

            Even as tears came to his eyes, the Squire kept his grip on his mind. Because it was wrong. Because maybe he didn’t know Bezel Lantea now, but he had known her then.

            And the Bezel who had visited him in the hospital…

            She would _never_ have said that about his mother. She’d said something completely different.

            It was a lie. It was all just lies based on his own fears. Not memories.

 

            “You’ve lost.” The Squire rasped. “You have nothing but lies, pain, and suffering. You have _nothing_ that can stop me from fighting you.” He smiled at the thing and gestured to the stump of its arm. “And if you can bleed, you can be killed.”

 

            The Liar was down to one arm, its legs, and all the mouths that covered its body. The Squire was exhausted, emotionally overdrawn, and almost drained of mana.

            “Nothing but lies?” The Liar hissed, and closed the gap with another scream that made the air shudder. Down to one arm, the thing from beyond the Veil gave up on subtlety, gave up on merely toying with him. The Squire realized too late that it was done using him as a cat would a mouse. The blows were heavier. He lost Whins’ blade, watched it fly off uselessly and disappear into the mists around them. The strike was severe enough to smash his armguard clean off and leave his arm bruised from the torn leather.

            Down to one sword, the Squire backpedaled away, trying desperately from suffering a mortal blow.

            “Lies, he says. As if my eyes could not pierce that which you could only _dream_ of. I call you the unbroken boy, but you _will_ break! You will break, and the world will break with you! You will scream her name and she will be lost to you! You will pledge her your loyalty, but when she asks it of you, you will _tear it away!_ ”

            The Liar howled with nothing but pure noise after that, and the Squire brought his sword up in a wide slicing arc. The demon caught it in its hand, held the blade in spite of the burning aura around the edge, gripping the flat of it with the gibbering mouths full of teeth at the end of its fingertips. His green magic flickered around the edge of the blade, fading. Collapsing. He was running out of mana to give.

            The Liar knew it.

           

            “She will die in your arms, and you will fall apart. Atlantis will fall, and all that you swore an oath to defend her people from will come as a hungry wave.” The thing cackled. “Better to die here to me. It would be less painful.”

            “You lie.” The Squire hissed. “You always lie! You do **_nothing but lie!_** ” He had to scream it. It was too terrible to not be another falsehood. Another barb. Another attempt to break him.

            And the horrible thing laughed again, and uttered one last whisper in the one voice it hadn’t yet tried. His mother’s.

            _“Don’t let them see them getting to you.”_ It crooned sweetly.

            The Squire broke.

 

            He broke, and he screamed, and in his pain, reached to the living world and took what he needed. His green aura flared back to life and whorls of blue danced in it. He forced it up through his arms, through his sword. It burned at The Liar’s hand and it recoiled, and he struck, cleaving a deep gash that severed arm, shoulder, and most of its head as he pushed up off of the ground with the last of his strength.

 

            The Squire hit the ground behind it and collapsed, and the whispers slowly began to fade. The Liar teetered once, twice, and slumped to the ground.

            One of its eyes, still intact on part of its head, fixated on him. One of its mouths, still moving, whispered.

            _“My broken boy.”_ The Liar wheezed, laughing even in defeat. _“Broken. I’ll see you in 100 years.”_

            And the Squire wanted to scream at it, to remind it that in 100 years he would be dead. But he had no energy left to him, his aura guttered back out and faded, and he was dizzy. He slumped to one knee and watched as The Liar began to fade away, turning translucent, then transparent, and then disappearing entirely. The fog left with it.

            He slumped to the ground, tears in his eyes, and clung to the memory of his mother.

 

            **You’re so brave. Don’t ever stop being brave.**

 

***

 

_Portstand Rapid Response Division Encampment_

_Dalum Province, Aroca_

_The Below_

_2 Days Later_

 

 

            “By every measure...this operation was screwed up by the numbers.” Knight Commander Sloane said. Speaking at the hastily assembled inquiry back at the 242nd RRD’s base, he stood behind the witness’s podium as the leadership of the Order of Mage Knights, either in person or telepresent by astral projection spells, listened impassively. The Squire sat in his own chair, his left hand in a sling after the healing that had set the hairline fracture beneath his bruised skin steadily to rights. His own after-action report, given in person, had been the last thing before the brief recess for lunch. It had been a grueling morning, and had almost collapsed him again. They’d nearly treated him as a hostile witness, with two of the inquiry board members all but accusing him of _murdering_ his lieutenant and squad leader, and trying to gloss over his guilt with tales of cowardice and insanity.

            “We had no idea what we were flying into. The moment we saw the fog...we should have expected it. The testimony of the last surviving squire from Strike Team 4 only confirmed what my suspicions were moments after I put down my first chromatic-eyed fellbeast; a demon of whispers and madness codified in our threats index as The Liar. Not seen in over 100 years. Lieutenant Baynes knew what it was. She knew the category. Code Violet. She was right.” Sloane got through the words like he was eating a plate of ashes and dying for a glass of water. “By the time we realized what we’d walked into, it was too late to retreat and call for a sanitization archspell. We were surrounded, swarmed, and cut off. It could have killed all of us, if the squire you spent all morning _belittling_ hadn’t found the courage and the will to succeed where so many have failed.”

            _“And yet we still are left contemplating the cause of this...tragedy.”_ One of the generals who was there by a projection spell said, a momentary flicker in his image hinting at the distance. _“According to the squire’s testimony, civil unrest led to a sizable portion of the populace working up a summoning spell that got out of hand. The Order maintains several layers of protection around Terra, and yet something like this is able to get through? Perhaps further restrictions and curfews need to be put into place to keep the inhabitants of Below from causing another tragedy like this again.”_

            Sloane worked his jaw. He was angry, the Squire realized. “Future policy is _not_ the focus of this inquiry, so far as I was made aware at the start. You merely wished to confirm the accuracy of my squire’s initial reports, and to verify that no charges needed to be filed. Has this board found cause for articles of prosecution?”

            The assembled leaders of the Order looked to one another, and a few shook their heads. The head of the inquiry board took that as his signal, shaking his head as he addressed Sloane.

            “Under the circumstances, this board finds no evidence that the last surviving member of Strike Team 4 did anything that would require further investigation or prosecution. The presence of a Code Violet threat always comes with casualties and consequences. Indeed, given what apparently occurred to the rest of his squad, your squire is to be commended for his actions. There are few men who would be able to function effectively in such a crisis, much less a 14 year old boy. That he was able to survive an encounter with that entity, defeat it, and cast the banishing Geas beforehand speaks to his training and the furthering of his education while under your command.”

            Sloane nodded. “He was always pushing himself into further training, picking up skills that the others in his squad did not take the time to develop.”

            “Perhaps he will inspire others to change and adapt to his methods in the future.” Another board member that had been sympathetic to the Squire announced. “Given the casualties suffered by the 242 RRD, you might consider placing him on the fast track for promotion. His talents will benefit Atlantis in the future.”

            “I have been considering steps in that direction, sirs.” Sloane said.

            “In that case, as chairman of this inquiry board, I declare this inquiry closed.” The chairman slammed a rock down against the desk, and everyone in the room stood up as the board members filed out.

            The Squire slumped back into his chair as everyone else filed out and closed his eyes. He saw The Liar again for a few moments before he shook it off. “Is it over?”

            “The inquiry? Yes. But the work never stops.” Knight Commander Sloane walked over and sat down beside him, letting out a long sigh. “How are you holding up, kid?”

            “I just want to sleep. But I can’t.” The Squire confessed, and he pushed his right hand through his mop of messy hair. “I...I keep seeing them all. Seeing _it_.”

            He felt Sloane set a hand on his shoulder, and cracked his eyes open. The older man watched him with understanding. “Survivor’s guilt. Battle trauma.” He pulled his hand back. “It can hit anyone. But with you...You need to tell yourself something. It wasn’t your fault. Okay? That anybody lived through that mess is nothing less than a mana-blessed miracle. Your lieutenant lost her mind, your squad leader went insane and _killed a civilian_ , of course you had to put him down. You managed to keep the others together long enough to approach and identify the threat...and then you ended it. You. Nobody else. The Liar? Kid, nobody gets out of an encounter with that….that _thing_ and isn’t a little bit shaken up. The last time it appeared was 150 years ago, and it took an entire division fighting her and her pets to stop her. Half of them didn’t make it back. For you to be able to take her down, on your own?”

 

            Sloane sighed and looked up at the ceiling. “I had a feeling about you, kid. That you were something special.” He dug in his pocket for a bit, then set something cool and metallic into the Squire’s open hand. “Here. You’ve earned this.”

            The Squire grabbed it and held it up, and was stunned to see a badge bearing the emblem of a Mage Knight on it.

            A new rank insignia, meant to be adhered to his armor.

            “But...I’m a squire.” He protested.

            “You faced a Code Violet threat almost entirely on your own. You’re the last surviving member of your squad.” Sloane kept staring at him. “You’ve earned it. As soon as I heard you lived, even before the inquiry? I had it made for you. You’re a Knight now. And maybe you don’t believe it now, but you are one. So wear it until you do. And don’t ever feel guilty.”

            The Squ...The _Knight_ looked between the badge and his Knight Commander before chuckling weakly. “That...That first briefing you gave us. For a while there, I thought you were just trying to intimidate us. But you weren’t.”

            Sloane looked so tired then, as his eyes drifted away from the Knight’s face. “No. I wasn’t.” He agreed. “And mana help me, there are never enough knights around for what needs to be done. So after you’ve healed up, _squad leader_ , the work starts again. I just need to find a team for you first. Got a lot of openings to fill now.”

            The Knight nodded, and they both stood up, finally heading for the doors that led out of the board room. Sloane pushed them open and led the way out, then froze with a hiss and bowed on reflex. The Knight almost stopped still inside of the room, but his curiosity got the better of him, and he joined his commander.

            And he froze as well, then, for it was Princess Bezel Lantea, flanked by two Knights from base security who had been waiting in the hall for them. Her face wasn’t as stony as it had been at the graduation ceremony, but she still stood rigidly, precisely, in the posture expected of royalty. Her bright red hair was tied in another elaborate braid, and her fine dress lacked the frills, but was still fancier and more expensive than even his armor must have been.

            “I see that manners and etiquette are not subjects that the Rapid Response Division bothers to learn.” Bezel said imperiously, and the Knight blinked, snapping back to attention when the hiss of Knight Commander Sloane beside him pulled him free of his open-ended ogling. His superior was bowing deeply, but had his head turned to glare up at him.

            The Knight finally bowed, and Bezel made a small noise of satisfaction. “Better.”

            “Your royal highness. What brings you to Below today?” Sloane said, rising back up. The Knight followed his posture shortly after.

            Bezel lowered her head down to look at them both properly. “Even in the halls of my father’s castle, there were stories told of a young squire who survived a terrifying ordeal and single-handedly defeated a beast from the space between worlds.”

            “He has been Knighted since then.” Sloane said, and the Knight unfolded his curled fingers to show his new badge, marking him as having completed his squire’s tenure. “Not more than two minutes ago, actually.”

            Bezel smiled, and...Maybe the Knight was looking too hard for what he wanted to see, but the smile seemed genuine. For a bit, anyways.

            “Good. In that case, as he has completed his training, I require his services.”

            “My lady?” Sloane asked, surprised at her request. “His services?”

            “I am at an age where my father believes I need a guardian instead of a caretaker. I had been willing to make do with a squire if their skills in combat were _adequate_ , and there was talk that the soldiers in your supervision, Knight Commander Sloane, were among the best in that regard. However, as this boy has been promoted to the rank of Knight, I will take him, and leave your squires to receive further instruction from you.”

            Sloane drew in a breath, as did the Knight, but for different reasons. His superior’s wrath was never far from the surface, and he was clearly holding it back now.

            “I am sure that there are plenty of more _willing_ candidates for the position of...a _bodyguard_ , milady.” The Knight couldn’t help but just stare at her as she bandied words with Sloane.

            She wanted him? Why? Did she…

            “I am the daughter of your mage king, a royal princess of the blood. I deserve the best of all things, and from what I have been told of your newly promoted knight here, he fits the definition of the best.” She narrowed her green eyes and watched Sloane like a hawk. “Or are you saying that I am to be denied my wishes, Knight Commander?”

 

            Sloane breathed slow and deep, and settled for a shake of his head. “No, Princess Bezel. Of course my knight is at your disposal, if you feel you have need of him. However, he is still recovering from the battle of Zolim, and will not be fit for duty for another week yet. Once he receives his medical clearance, we could begin his transfer to the royal guard.”

            Bezel’s eyes stayed narrowed, but she smiled again, with less warmth than before. “That is acceptable. I shall expect him to report for duty on Atlantis within a week, then, or sooner, should his recovery be speedier than your estimate. Just be sure that he is fully recovered. I do not wish to supervise damaged goods.”

            She spun around and walked off, and the two base guards gave Sloane and the Knight an apologetic bow before following after her. Sloane waited until she was gone and out of earshot, and then punched the wall hard enough to chip off masonry.

            “Stuck up, presumptuous, _arrogant little bi…_ ” Sloane growled, cutting the last word off. He fumed for a couple more seconds, then turned to the Knight with sorrow in his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

            “For what?” The Knight asked, puzzled.

            “I’m sorry that I couldn’t protect you from them.” Sloane explained. “It’s dangerous here, but...up there? On Atlantis? The royal guard is something else entirely. That close to the throne, the Order is...different. You can lose yourself up there. Forget what’s important.”

            Sloane was probably right, and the Knight found it harder after her haughty and self-absorbed explanation for wanting him as a guardian to believe that anything would ever be good again. He’d sacrificed three years for the memory of a princess who had played with him and who he’d nearly died for.

            It was nothing but a memory now, he accepted. The laugh he let out was bitter.

            “My life is hers.” He admitted, seeing the invisible chain around his neck for what it was. “We never get to choose.”

            “It’s not right.” Sloane protested, and the Knight surprised even himself when he reached a hand out and set it to his mentor’s shoulder.

            “Don’t get angry over the things you can’t change.”

 

***

 

            In the end, he only needed five days to recover, physically anyways, from the ordeal that was now being called the Battle of Zolim. Mentally, he was still a mess, and Sloane knew better than to press him, even getting the base physician to sign off that the full weeks’ estimated recovery had been accurate. He spent the last two days doing his best to get back to his routine, only to find it shattered. There were no lessons to be had with Lieutenant Baynes. There was no sense of belonging, his squad was gone. The barracks that had once held two full squads was empty as a jar of air, quiet as a tomb. Of the survivors in the 242nd, there were two groups; those that whispered at a distance with awe and reverence, and those that stared with unforgiving eyes, resenting that he had lived when so many they’d known had died. He was either a hero or a living traitor to them. He pushed it away, relying on his mother’s lessons. They were all that he had left of her now.

            The Knight was beginning to forget her face. It became another weight on his tired spirit. On the morning of the seventh day, he packed up his belongings, strapped on his armor that now bore his Knight’s sigil, took up his sword, and walked to the transportation pad, where he was whisked away to Atlantis, processed within the royal guard for his reassignment, and then assumed his post.

 

            Sloane had been right about the royal guard. They put far more stock in appearances, ceremony, and minutiae. The Knights there were the sons of the higher castes, bound in orbit around the royal family, educated in the trappings and finery of their role and their office even before they had reported for training. Within minutes of his arrival, he had been mocked, sneered at, belittled. With every word, he betrayed his simple upbringing and exposed another nerve for them to cut into.

            The Knight endured it in silence. The first days as Bezel’s guardian were torture. He was so close to her, but he could not look at her. He stood behind her, but could not talk to her. He was charged with her safety, but he could not touch her.

            She would wake in the morning and he would be waiting by her door. She would give him the barest nod, a single word (His rank), then walk past him and expect him to keep up.

            Bezel would lead him to social functions that seemed endless, each less meaningful than the last. Tea parties and social gatherings. Art unveilings and galas.

            There was even a dance where he was required to stand to the side with the rest of the _guardians_ as she passed from one suitor to the next, wearing a placid smile in a gown that made her seem a goddess (So far as the men she danced with always took the opportunity to remind her), and all the while she remained as aloof, as distant, as self-assured as all the other royals.

            She laughed when someone made a jibe at the Knight’s presence, bemoaning the fact that she was forced to deal with a guardian who hailed from Below instead of a _properly trained_ Mage Knight of the royal guard. She deflected the insult by giving one of her own. _‘Well, he is considered something of a dangerous warrior. There was apparently some trouble down on the surface that he helped to put down. We took him on as a personal favor to another member of the Order who did a service to us in the past. Some allowances must be made for his rustic ways, but it has been trying nonetheless.’_

            His hand shook on his sword after that. He didn’t sleep at all that night. Every time he tried, he flashed back to the Liar, who had worn her face and spoken in her voice and said such horrible things to him.

            They didn’t seem like lies anymore.

 

            With every passing day spent on assignment in the royal guard, the Knight’s bitterness and hatred grew. At the two week mark, the princess at last had a clear spot in her calendar, an entire day where she had no formal commitments. The Knight thought that it would be an opportunity to leave and collect himself, but that morning, he was roused and chastised for not assuming his post, and all but shoved out of the royal barracks with no breakfast and five minutes before the usual time she emerged from her rooms to begin the day.

            When she did so, it was ten minutes later than her normal schedule, and she wore a simple dress of light purple fabric. Her red hair was pulled back into a loose ponytail and shortly after hidden by a hooded cloak of green. She carried a satchel which she handed over to him without a request for aid, then spoke to him directly for the first time since he had taken the post.

            “I have decided to go for a walk about Atlantis today. You will accompany me, knight.”

 

            He wanted to refuse her, to shove the bag back in her face and slice his own throat.

            The Knight slung the bag’s strap over his shoulder, nodded once with glazed eyes, and fell in three steps behind her as she strolled for the palace’s exit.

 

***

 

            It was agony, and he fell on the same rehearsed routine that he had developed over the past two weeks to endure it. With Bezel leading, he glanced at her only out of the side of his eye, and only ever long enough to confirm she was still leading him. The rest of the time, he swept the perimeter for threats, sized up possible hindrances. He missed the shift after they left the palace grounds, slipped out of the royal’s safety net, and walked out into the streets. He missed the shift when they crossed the unspoken boundary between the territory of the higher castes into the spaces reserved for public use.

            “I’m...I’m sorry.” Bezel said, a raw ache in her voice capturing his attention. He finally whirled to look at her, and found her shoulders drooping, her hooded head bowed. She stopped walking ahead, and then turned to face him.

            She was crying, and the Knight stopped breathing.

            “I am so _sorry_.” She repeated. “I...I’ve said so many hurtful things since you arrived here. Or I’ve said nothing at all. You didn’t deserve any of it. Their scorn, or my indifference.”

            He blinked rapidly, wondering what she was building towards. She held out a hand and gestured to the satchel, and the Knight wordlessly handed it back over. Princess Bezel slung the strap over her own shoulder and sniffed. “Do you remember me?”

            “I remember the girl I knew when I was younger.” The Knight rasped, the sound clawing its way out of his throat. “But she’s dead now.”

            “No. She isn’t.” Bezel shook her head rapidly. “She’s drowning, but sh...I’m still here.”

            She was trying not to cry, and there was pain in her voice. She was saying things that were close to what the Knight wanted to hear. But he had hoped before and suffered for it. Was still suffering for it.

            “I wish I could believe you.” He heard himself tell her. Bezel shuddered and took a step back from him, and the pain in her face doubled.

            “What can I say to show you that you can?” She asked him hollowly. “What do you need to hear to understand that I’m the same Bezel you knew before? That every disparaging word I ever uttered or let others utter in your presence hurt me as much as it did you?”

            “What _could_ you say?” He countered, getting angry and not caring. The scars on his heart were too numerous for him to care. It broke every regulation about decorum and conversation between royalty and the Order. But he had been silent for too long, screamed inside his mind for too long. Wouldn’t it be easier to just let it all burn? “Words. Empty, _lying_ things.”

            Bezel pushed her hood back, and he watched her lip tremble. “I just wanted my friend. I wanted _one_ good thing in my life that wasn’t...wasn’t _tainted_ by what I was born into. When you told me that you were joining the guard, I knew that it wasn’t going to be easy.”

            “I saw you at my graduation.” He accused her. “You couldn’t even _look_ at me.”

            Bezel choked on a sob. “First row. Four down.” She said, and he went still. “I knew you were there. I wanted to run up to you, to grab your hand. I couldn’t. And after? They watch everything I do. My father and his minders. I had to leave you alone for three years. It was the last thing I wanted. My life isn’t my own. Do you understand that?”

            If she was telling the truth...The Knight knew all too well what she meant. He had lived it too.

            “Words.” He repeated, and closed his eyes. He waited for her to try and say more to him, to try and convince him that it wasn’t all just another lie. Another dagger to his heart.

            “...If you...if you can’t stand to be around me, I...I will release you.” Bezel stumbled through her words, and every syllable tumbled out of her like a stone. “You can go back...back to your unit. I’ll never bother you again. If that’s what you want.”

            “What I want, nobody can give me.” The Knight whispered back, standing still as a statue.

            His eyes snapped open when he felt Bezel press something into his palm. Tears streaked down her face, but she refused to wipe them away. The Knight looked down at his hand and found a locket resting there, a silver chain hanging from its setting.

            “I made it for you.” She said, unable to meet his eyes. “Years ago. After I heard about what happened in Zolim, I was out of my mind with worry. I thought I’d never be able to give it to you. It...it can be your farewell gift.”

            He snapped it open, and sparks of magic from inside rose up and formed an image of a woman, smiling sadly. The Knight let out a ragged gasp as it spoke.

            **_“You’re so brave. Don’t ever stop being brave.”_**

His mother. Bezel had somehow enchanted the locket with the exact likeness of his mother. Given it his mother’s voice. He had forgotten what she looked like.

            He would never forget her again.

            “How?” The Knight asked, tracing the edge of the locket reverently. He looked up at the princess, still crying silently. Crying without breaking. “How did you…?”

            The princess held up her hand and summoned up her aura around it, a faint blue glow. “I’m good at making things. I always have been since I was little. But it’s just little things, tiny works of artifice.”

            He closed the locket and squeezed it. “This is no _little thing_.” He said, his bone-deep weariness fading at last.

            “She was your mother.” Bezel said to him sadly. “I made it while I could still remember her. She deserves to be remembered.”

            The Knight would carry the burdens of Zolim for the rest of his life. He would wear its scars. He doubted words, because words could lie.

            “I’ll stay.” He sighed, and reached a gloved hand up, using his thumb to brush away the tears on her face. “I’ll stay.”

            Her lower lip trembled, and then she flung herself at him, wrapped her arms around his waist (He was taller than she was now, they’d been the same height as children, but now he was a head taller and still growing), and buried her face into his chest.

            “Do you promise?” She asked him, still breaking. Free of his own mind and the spiral of hate and suffering it had been trapped in, he listened and finally heard her. Heard how tired she sounded. How afraid she sounded.

            The Knight realized that she was more like him than he’d known. Yes, there were differences. She wanted for nothing in her life; she didn’t starve, she had a warm bed every night, people that fussed and fawned over her endlessly. All the trappings of nobility and royalty, but they were a trap nonetheless. Because she had to act a certain way. Speak a certain way. But in the ways that mattered, she was like him. She could not break out of that mold. Had not been able to. And yet, she made statues and lockets, hiding treasured memories in them.

            Who did she have in her life that knew her for who she was?

            The Knight awkwardly patted her on the back with the hand that wasn’t tightly clutching the locket with his mother’s picture in it.

            “I am your Knight, princess.”

 

***

 

            He should have expected it. After separating and laughing in relief, Princess Bezel Lantea had led the Knight along a path and into a park full of trees and walking paths that he had not seen since the day he and his mother had left Atlantis behind. They came to a stop next to a pond he remembered perfectly. A pond that still had ducks swimming along its surface.

            Bezel dug into her satchel and came out with a paper sack full of bread pieces, taken from the palace kitchen. She smiled nervously at him and handed the sack over to the Knight, and he plucked out a piece of bread before popping it into his mouth. She giggled as he gave the bag back to her, and took a piece out to eat herself.

            It was their ritual, he realized. Then they sat down side by side and fed the ducks as slowly as possible, throwing out bread one chunk at a time. Both of them wanted to make it last. Neither of them wanted to leave.

            Out here, nobody bothered them. There were no courtiers watching her with hawk’s eyes. No royal guards sizing him up so they could leap on his faults of decorum. A feeling he couldn’t place took hold, and it was the work of several minutes of silent contemplation before he realized that he was finally calm, and at peace.

            “I was so scared.” She confessed, ending the easy silence between them. “Hearing about Zolim...about what you had to go up against. That you lived, and so many others died.”

            “It…” The Knight started, and froze up.

            Her hand sought his out, coming to rest on top of his glove.

            “It was bad.” He admitted, meeting her bright green eyes for a moment before he looked back out over the pond. “And then, everyone thinking that I…”

            “They were wrong to accuse you.” She growled, and her fingernails dug at the leather covering the back of his hand for a moment. “You’re a hero. You’re _my_ hero.”

            “They don’t want heroes, milady.” The Knight said. “They want obedient soldiers.”

            “And what do _you_ want?” She asked him.

            The Knight swallowed at that, and tried to remember his place. He was a fourteen year old knight. She was a thirteen year old princess of the blood.

            “I want to be happy.” He said, because it was vague enough, and safe enough of a thing to say. “I want what I do to _mean_ something.”

            “I want that too.” Bezel said, and the sense of _truth_ rang between them. “That’s why I wanted you here. By my side.”

            The Knight snorted. “I thought you wanted _the best_.”

            She raised an eyebrow at him. “Are you saying you’re not?” They stared at one another before Bezel broke down into giggles, and the Knight let out a sharp barking laugh. “No. I wanted my friend back. I feel more like myself when I’m around you. I didn’t have that for a long time.”

            “So I’m to be your living conscience then, princess?”

            “No, you…” She cut herself off and sighed. “Just be _you_.”

            The Knight watched her for any sign of a falsehood, but found none. “I can do that.” He assured her. “Is this the real you?”

            Bezel drew her knees up towards her chest and hugged them. “I don’t know, honestly. But I want it to be.” She shut her eyes. “You are the only thing that feels _real_. And I like how I feel when you’re around.”

            After two weeks spent in hell, her actions, her words, her _truth_ washed over him like a wave. He was left feeling tired, and he slumped back onto the grass, staring up at the sunny sky through the treetops. There was nobody around to judge him, and only the sound of nearby nesting birds and the wind rushing through leaves battering at his ears. Not the screams of the dying, or the shrieks of monsters. Not sick, twisted lies that tore at his heart.

            “Are you okay?” Bezel asked him.

            “I’m tired.” The Knight said, and closed his eyes. He felt her hand rest on his arm.

            “Then rest.” She encouraged him.

            The Knight breathed, feeling his bone-deep fatigue taking hold of him. But he lingered on the edge of awareness, no matter how sweet the grass smelled, or how warm the sun felt on his skin.

            “Will you still be here when I wake up?”

            “Always.” Bezel vowed, and there was a tremor of power in that pledge, unintentional, but still there. He let the quiet darkness claim him, and fell into dreamless sleep.

            When he snapped awake some unknown time later, the sun was still in the sky, and the birds were still chirping. But he didn’t hear Bezel. He looked around and froze, startled to find her lying beside him on the grass, turned on her side and leaning on an arm. She had been watching him sleep.

 

            **You keep going, and you find the people who _do_ care about you. And you never stop caring about them in return.**

            Bezel smiled, and the Knight smiled back, touched the locket in his pocket. She had offered to let him go, in spite of how much it would hurt her. She had given him the freedom of choice. And he had chosen. He was her guardian. Her Knight.

            His life was hers.

 


	4. And He Gave Her The World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Princess Bezel has claimed her knight guardian, but even a princess can suffer. Determined to keep him in her life, she will learn more about him than she had ever fathomed, and learn about the world hidden from her eyes in the process. Bezel would change the world if she could, and only by standing together can the princess and her knight hope to change anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The suggested music for this chapter is as follows:
> 
> -"The Ten Duel Commandments" from the musical Hamilton  
> -"If Everyone Cared" by Nickelback

**_Little Moment: The Sorceress And The Knight_ **

By Eric ‘Erico’ Lawson

 

**Three: And He Gave Her The World**

  
  


When Princess Bezel Lantea had been nine years old and going on ten, her nanny had taken her on a trip out to one of the public parks situated between the elite quarter around the capital city and the lower-caste tenements on the outskirts. Tired of being doggedly pursued and supervised and having her life organized to the minute, she had escaped and gone running into the park while the older woman had been distracted, making her way for the duck pond that she’d been told about.

When she was nine she met a boy there, a boy from the lower castes who looked miserable and hungry, and gave him an apple. They fed the ducks together, nibbling on bread crusts themselves, and then played. She had reveled in it. No expectations, nobody bowing or simpering or belittling her with hollow praise. The boy saw her for her, and Bezel loved it. She remembered that day enough that when she went back home, she went to her artificing, the one thing in the world she was actually  _ good at _ with her magic, and made a statue. Some passing cultural minister’s assistant had spied her working on it and begged for it to go on tour Below, as a mark of ‘charity’ from the royal family to the masses. Bezel let it go because her father had insisted on it, but she regretted its loss. She had been using it to remember the boy.

When she was ten, she was dispatched as the royal family’s representative along with her uncle and his wife and children to attend the Unification Day ceremonies held Below. That year, they were attending in Banali City with Duke Filitas acting as their host.

When she was ten, she almost died. She would have died like everyone else had when those horrible men charged the stands after the bomb had gone off. They had gutted everyone else, the nobles, her uncle, her  _ cousins _ …

She’d slipped between the risers and was whimpering with blood dripping all around her, losing herself, and would have been found by the killers. But he found her first. The boy from the park.

Her hero.

He and his mother grabbed her and they ran, and they  _ ran _ and they  _ fought _ and then his mother died. Bezel had never known her own mother. But his mother was everything she ever wanted in her own, and she died protecting them.

His mother’s last words burned into her brain.  _ “You’re so brave. Don’t ever stop being brave.” _ It wasn’t fair, and it was wrong, and she wanted to cry. She wanted to cry and hold him so he could cry, but the world was still wrong, and they were running again. 

When she was ten, the boy had stood between her and death, exploded with magic from a green aura, saved her life, and almost lost his own.

When she was ten, Bezel visited her hero in the hospital and learned he had just volunteered to join the Mage Knights. To protect her. When she was ten, he finally cried for his dead mother, and she went back to the palace and made a necklace to keep the memory of her alive, and hoped that he was still her friend.

 

When Princess Bezel Lantea was thirteen, she went to his graduation and suffered in silence with the weight of formality and her father the king and everyone’s  _ expectations _ keeping her from doing what she wanted to do. He was second in his class. She  _ knew _ where he was sitting. Bezel had long ago learned how to look at things without ever turning her head. She had learned how to act like people expected her to, and how to hide how she really felt, not betray what she really wanted to say. 

When she was thirteen, she listened to a nobleman’s son give the valedictorian speech at the recruit’s graduation to the rank of squire, listened to him talk about the tragedy of three years before and use it as a cudgel for the same brutal agenda of suppression her father was so vociferous about.

_ You weren’t there _ , she screamed inside of her head, never moving her neck. But her eye flickered down to her friend, the boy who wasn’t little any longer, and saw him sit rigid and struggling to keep up his own mask.  _ We were there, you have no right. You didn’t suffer like he did, like I did.  _

But the speech ended, her father (the Mage King) rose and began clapping, and Atlantis moved on, and Bezel kept screaming inside of her mind.

When she was thirteen, she learned that her squire had been assigned to a Rapid Response Division, under the same Mage Knight that had been in the hospital room with him three years before. She tried to trace his progress as surreptitiously as she could, a process made somewhat easier once her father insisted that she was old enough that a nanny was no longer good enough. She needed a proper guardian now instead of just a chaperone. The death of his brother and his brother’s entire family in Banali City had rattled him terribly, rattled them all.

She was a princess, she told herself, building up the flimsy excuse in her mind. If she was going to have a Mage Knight as her guardian, it would be him. It could be nobody else but him. Royalty would only get the best. There was nobody better than him. He’d almost died once to save her, would anybody else in the royal guard manage as well?

When she was thirteen, she learned that her squire’s entire division had been deployed to Zolim, the jewel of Aroca, that a Code Violet threat, the sort that ate Mage Knights alive and usually took the full weight of Atlantis to quell, was the cause. She felt her heart seize up in her chest as the casualty reports filtered out, and she learned that his entire  _ squad _ , his entire  _ strike team _ had been killed in action.

All except for him. 

When she was thirteen, she declared that she had come to a decision regarding the status of her guardian and ventured Below, transporting to Portstand Encampment where what was left of the 242nd RRD had returned back to. She had expected to find her squire in the infirmary. Instead, she was informed that her squire, and Knight Commander Sloane, were at an  _ inquiry _ regarding the Zolim massacre. To determine if charges needed to be assigned.

_ How dare you all try to do this to him, when all he’s ever done is sacrifice himself for others!  _ Bezel screamed in her mind, and set off with her escorts trailing behind her. But when she finally found him, was looking at him face to face…

He was so tired, and exhausted, and  _ haunted _ , and somehow she managed to keep a straight face instead of running right for him and wrapping her arms around him and burying her face into his chest like she wanted to. But all he could do was just stare at her, stare at her with such terrible longing.

When she was thirteen, Bezel wore the mantle of the royal highness Princess Bezel Lantea and spoke with derision and haughty dismissal (like everyone in her caste was expected to) and declared that she was looking for a guardian, that she had come for the best. And since a  _ squire _ had apparently not only survived the Zolim massacre, but been instrumental in putting it down, she would make her decision not on rank, but on merit.

Then she had learned that Sloane had just promoted him to full Mage Knight. Her boy had become her squire. Her squire was now her knight. But it was still him.

She hoped it was still him, underneath that face that one tragedy and trauma after another had chiseled onto him. As it was, she still had to go home and wait another week.

A week later, he was there beside her. But he  _ wasn’t _ .

 

_ Do you remember me? Do you hate me? Are you still the same boy who saved my life, who played with me in a park when I was so lonely? _

He walked behind her everywhere she went. He stood like a statue, looking towards her but never looking  _ at _ her. And then that dinner party.

That  _ stupid _ dinner party, where that harpy asked about the far too young knight who had come with as her guardian and stood less than fifteen feet away as she talked about him. Like he couldn’t hear her. Like he was supposed to ignore her.

And Bezel knew what was expected. She knew what she couldn’t say. The smallest bit of her rising up in his defense...blood in the water. She had seen glimpses of how the courtiers actually were when they weren’t kowtowing to the royal family. So she breathed in…

_ Please forgive me I don’t mean any of this please please don’t hate me… _

...And lied about him, belittled him. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw his hand shake on the pommel of his sword.

When she was thirteen, she knew that she had broken his heart, and she didn’t know if she could make it right. But she had to try. For all that he meant to her, for all that she might have meant to him three years, four years ago, she had to try. So she stole a bag of bread from the kitchens, packed up her bags, and palmed a locket she had kept hidden, kept safe, since she had been ten. Bezel opened it one last time, and drew strength from the image of his mother, and pretended it was her own.

**_“You’re so brave. Don’t ever stop being brave.”_ **

_ I’ll try _ , she had whispered to a ghost frozen in time, and slipped the locket into a pocket of her dress and rang the bell to summon her guardian.

The walk to the park was a long one, because he never said anything. He never had a reaction beyond keeping three steps behind her, watching their surroundings more than he watched her. The perfect soldier. The perfect guardian.

They were both still wearing masks and she hated it, and she screamed inside of her head until finally, she broke. Bezel broke, and she apologized, and…

And he was so  _ tired _ , and broken, and…

**Words. Empty, lying things.**

She had lost him. The boy was gone, and all that was left was a broken knight. She gave him the locket she had made for him years ago, intending it as a farewell gift. He was lost to her, but she could at least give him the memory of his mother.

_ But it was no small thing _ .

She hadn’t lost her friend after all. 

When Bezel was thirteen, her knight told her he would stay. They were both broken, both screaming behind masks. But he was still himself. Still her hero. 

He was still her knight. And he was so tired after they fed the ducks, that he slumped back in the grass and asked if she would still be there when he woke up.

_ Where else would I want to be, if not with you? _ She thought, and promised him she would be. So he slept.

And when he woke up, hours later...she was still there at his side.

When she was thirteen, her knight smiled at her.

When she was thirteen, Bezel realized she loved him.

 

***

 

_ One Month After the Zolim Incident _

_ The Royal Palace _

_ Floating Continent Of Atlantis _

  
  


Princess Bezel Lantea woke up with the sun in her eyes through the window of her bedroom and a soft breeze drifting through the curtains around her four-poster bed. The scent of mana lillies, blushing purple flowers with star-shaped petals and yellow stamens, lingered in the room from a cutting of them sitting in a vase by her dresser. She stared over at the precious flowers that grew only in an environment abundant with magic and breathed in the smell of them. The start of a new day, with promise and potential. Most of it was going to be boring, more time spent with her tutors in magic and history and languages and mathematics. The last was her favorite, really.

No. The best parts of her day had to do with what happened between all of those appointments, when she was escorted about. Because of who her escort was. Her guardian. Her hero.

Her knight.

 

With practiced speed and the (unnecessary) assistance of her maid, Bezel cleaned and dressed for the day, going with the most functional, least frilly gown she could get away with. She dismissed her maidservant and waited precisely 16 seconds before putting on her most cheerful smile and opening the outer door to her quarters. She was used to wearing a mask. In the mornings before they saw anyone else was one of the few times she could wear a genuine smile.

Standing at attention outside, her knight made a slight bow, not as low as he should have, lower than she would have preferred. “Good morning, your highness.”

“Good morning, my knight.” She greeted him in return. “Did you sleep well?”

“Well enough, my lady.” The fourteen year old boy replied, falling in step behind her as she closed her door and started down the hall. “And you?”

“Fair.” She said, looking at him. He wore the breastplate of a royal guard, but kept the greaves, dark manamesh trousers, and hardened leather boots of a member of the RRD. Other royal guards had the option to grow their hair out, but her knight never let his dark hair grow more than an inch and a half away from his scalp, letting it jut up in wild spikes. The sword at his side was embedded with an emerald in the pommel, the mark of his power, and he kept a dagger on his opposite hip.

Other royal knights dressed to be noticed, to shine with polish like living statues. Hers dressed for function over form, and always looked deadly when they were around others. 

Like every other day, as soon as they appeared in a more public hallway and passed by another guard, Bezel schooled her smile to placid and gracious, and saw her knight stiffen his posture and even out his gait. He would stay like that for as long as he needed to. For hours.

She attended breakfast with her father and her two older brothers, Crown Prince Desmond and Jorran. Her father was more pleasant in private quarters, but was still a stern man. Still, he liked to dote on Bezel, and had doted on her more after the massacre at Banali City. It had meant he indulged her whims more often and didn’t press her quite as hard; it helped that as the third child, she was unlikely to inherit the kingdom, and the troubles of rulership that came with it.

Still, there were some days that he remained all too focused on her. This morning was one of them.

“Bezel, your magic combat instructor has sent me another report.” Mage King Volkas Lantea declared, after setting his fork down on his plate. Bezel didn’t flinch, and met his gaze head on. “You have been remiss in your lessons. He is displeased with your progress.”

“Oh, is our dear little sister struggling?” Prince Jorran teased her with more malice than was necessary. He was three years older than her, with their oldest brother Desmond already in his 19th year. And unlike Bezel, Jorran thrived for combat. With Desmond taking on the mantle of rulership and learning politics, Jorran had been training since he was a boy in the arts of warfare so he could serve as a trusted general. “Perhaps girls just aren’t cut out for it.”

The taunt was deliberate and clumsy, and Bezel ignored it. “Father, I do my best in training, but it just has never been a good fit for me. There are other things I am much better at, runecrafting for example, and…”

“You are a descendant of the Royal House of Lantea.” Her father thundered, tapping the table hard with a finger to make his point. “You possess the blue aura of your mother. We are  _ expected _ to be able to wield powerful magics to rule Terra. It is our birthright. You will do better in your magic lessons, or I shall find ways to encourage harder study. Perhaps the loss of your time idling away in that workshop of yours will suit. Your hobby is nothing, compared to ensuring that you uphold the family honor.” His voice softened after. “If you had been stronger before, you could have saved yourself in Banali City, my dear girl.”

 

Bezel stared down at her half-consumed plate, swallowing the hurt those words caused.

“If I had been there, sister, I could have slaughtered them all.” Jorran pointed out.

“You were  _ not _ there, Jorran, so you will silence your boasts.” Their father snapped, ending the conversation. “Bezel shall do better in her training, and you will not hold your own skill over her. You are siblings, and I will not see you fight.”

Bezel waited until silence hit the dining room, and then she pushed her chair back and rose up, her brothers and father watching her carefully.

“May I be excused? I should like some time to prepare before the day’s lessons.” She said crisply.

“Of course. Train well, Bezel.” Her father said. “You will make me proud, I am sure of it.”

She wondered about that, because nothing she ever did ever seemed good enough for her father, and was  _ never _ good enough for her brothers. She was the youngest child, the daughter, and nobody expected anything out of her. All anyone seemed to think she was good for was to be hoisted off in an arranged marriage when she came of age at 17. 

As soon as she slid out of the dining room, her knight slipped in behind her again, and spoke softly.

“I didn’t know you were having trouble with your magic.”

“My magic is  _ fine _ .” Bezel said curtly, and as quietly as she could manage. “I just have trouble using it to...to  _ hurt _ people. As if that was all it was good for.”

“The strong rule over the weak.” Her knight said, but she turned and looked back at him, because it didn’t sound right. He didn’t look like he believed it. Or he didn’t want to believe it.

He stared at her, as if waiting for an answer, and she couldn’t think of one. So she turned back around and kept walking.

Her knight followed, always watching her.

 

***

 

_ Royal Training Hall _

  
  


“More control, your highness!” The battlemage instructor that her father had hired for the children was as shrill and demanding as ever, wire-thin and caustic. Solern Drake was a career royal knight, dressed in the finest embroidered silks he could, and he was only holding up a shield of blue-tinted mana with one outstretched arm to protect himself from the wash of Bezel’s wild incineration wave. “You are merely releasing your strength in one direction. You are giving it no form, no shape!”

Bezel’s lungs pumped like a bellows, her red hair was tied back behind her head and she was dressed in the duelist’s uniform made for her training. Perspiration made the fabric she wore stick to her body in the most uncomfortable ways. Even worse than the grating, disappointed voice of her instructor, Bezel knew, was that this would be another negative report that would filter back to her father. 

Both of her brothers could do this easily. Jorran had moved to  _ homing darts _ when he was her age, and he too commanded a blue aura, equaling her in power, surpassing her in ability. She had the power, she just couldn’t  _ use it. _

“Enough.” Instructor Drake sighed, and  _ threw _ his shield at her, guiding it through the flow of her spell. Bezel let out a yelp as it forced her to cancel the attack and then dive for cover to avoid being smashed by it. She lay there gasping on the floor while Dake stepped over in a crisp cadence and stood over her.

“Princess Bezel.” He said, his polite words undermined by the irritated tone in his voice. “You are a daughter of the royal blood. It is  _ expected _ that you will command your power and wield it effectively. We have been at these lessons for many months now, but combat magic continues to prove... _ difficult _ .” He bit the word off, and Bezel could hear the one he’d wanted to say.  _ Impossible. _ She got up slowly and refused to look behind and to the side of her, where her knight had stood at the beginning of her lesson. 

She couldn’t bear to see disappointment in  _ his eyes _ as well.

“I’m trying.” She insisted. “I am  _ trying _ , Instructor Drake. I can manage shields, but...attack spells…” And what was a good way to say,  _ I don’t want to hurt anyone if I can? _

Her instructor closed his eyes for a moment. “I will see you tomorrow for another lesson.”

“But, I only meet with you every third day…” Bezel began, only to stop when his eyes snapped open.

“We will repeat this lesson.” Drake snapped. “If, by tomorrow, you are unable to conjure a successful incineration wave and overwhelm my mana shield, then further measures will need to be taken. There are expectations of you, and of me, by your father. Your brothers were never so much trouble as you have been.” 

Bezel felt those words of condemnation smash into her like a blow to the head. It left her reeling as she stood back up, bowed to her instructor out of reflex, and then started to walk away.

“If I were you, Princess, I would spend whatever time you have available tonight practicing.” Instructor Drake added nonchalantly. “While you still have free time.”

Her shoulders bunched up at the final barb, and she kept on walking towards the ladies’ dressing room. Her knight stepped in front of her when there was still ten more feet left to walk. 

“Are you all right, my lady?”

“No.” She whispered, staring at his feet, not daring to look up.

_ Don’t look at me. Don’t look at me with eyes that say that I’m not worth it. _

She stepped around him and shuffled into the changing room.

 

***

 

_ Princess Bezel’s Chambers _

_ Early Evening _

  
  


Bezel had never held her knight to the same standard as others who worked closely in her presence. She had told him that she had wanted a  _ friend _ more than a  _ guardian _ , and he had accepted that request with a worn and weary smile. She would often invite him in to sit in her chambers and talk about small things, about how he got along with the others, what interested him. She would tell him about how her lessons had gone, which ones she liked, which ones she didn’t.

She liked to sing. Nobody else knew that about her, she was shy about it. He had just looked at her for a long time when she told him that, and then asked if she might sing something for him one day.

Her blush that night, Bezel was sure could have been seen from Below. He never put her on the spot about it, he just said it was something he wanted to hear. 

But this night, he came inside without her extending an invitation, as he’d done the last two nights before, and then stood by the doorway as she sunk into the chair at her desk.

“Please leave.” She told him faintly.

“I cannot do that, princess.” Her knight said, calm and unflappable. Bezel leaned forward and rested her forehead against her arms.

“I gave you an order, guardian.” She said hollowly. “Please.”

“I am charged with defending your safety against threat and harm.” He said, still not moving. She would have heard his boots shuffling on the floor if he had. “That includes physical threats...and emotional ones.”

“You can’t  _ defend me _ from a problem inside of me.” Bezel said. She sat back up in her chair and sighed, then reached for one of the drawers on her desk as her hair settled back around her shoulders. “All that matters to them is power; the power to  _ kill _ . But I can’t. Every time I...They tell me to cast that spell and picture destroying someone completely. And I am repelled by it.” 

She dug out one of the small trinkets she had made months ago, a small sandstone engraved with a simple rune. She let it sit in the palm of her hand and whispered a word to it, and it came to life, glowing brightly and spinning before making stars dance over the ceiling of her darkened room. “I’m not  _ strong _ . I’m not a  _ real _ mage, my brothers always say that to me. And they’re right. I’m not. I can make trinkets, baubles, tiny workings of magic tied to artifice.” She let out a single bitter laugh and closed her hand around the stone, snuffing out the light show. “Weak. Helpless. Only good for small things. What good is an artificer next to a Royal Mage? Or a Mage Knight?”

She didn’t know how long she stared up at the ceiling, but when she brought her head back down, her knight was standing by her desk, frowning at her.

“What you can do is no small thing.” He said. “Could any other mage have made that traveling exhibit?” He reached underneath his armor and came out with the locket she had given him; the one containing the likeness, and the voice of his dead mother. “Could they have  _ made this _ from their  _ memories? _ ” 

“Probably not.” Bezel conceded, smiling at him weakly. She did like looking at him; The boy she had known had the same courage and resolve, but now he had a body fast coming into its prime. Her eyes didn’t linger long, and she slipped the stone back into her desk. “But I still can’t cast a spell designed to kill. And that’s all that matters. It’s a mark of the Lantean line; the power to rule.”

“I can kill. Do I deserve to rule?” Her knight questioned her, and Bezel blinked. That was twice now he’d said something about the weak over the strong, but this time it came as a question.

One she still didn’t have a response for. His stormy blue-gray eyes softened, and he stepped back and ran a gloved hand through his tousled short hair. 

“Have you ever studied the history of Atlantis?” He asked her finally. 

“Some.” She allowed. “I know that my ancestor, Lantea, was the one who first united the defenders of Terra to a common banner, so they could protect the world together.”

“Atlantis was a captured rock, taken from beyond the edge of the sky, brought down safely. In time, they built weapons and a fortress into it, and made it fly. The castle and the kingdom came after.” Her knight went on from there. “We studied the kingdom’s achievements at length in school. Long before Atlantis  _ ruled _ Terra, it was the world’s protector.”

Bezel blinked. “You learned that?”

“The major events, yes.” Her knight said. “The rest...The rest, I hope is true.”

“Why?” 

“Because I didn’t join the Mage Knights to kill either.” He explained, and just gazed at her lazily. “A Mage Knight defends the people of Terra from the threats beyond the sky and beyond the Veil. That you  _ value life _ enough to not want to take it…” 

He mustered a small smile, and her heart quivered a little. “I’m glad of it, Bezel.”

She found herself smiling back hopefully, then looked away before he could catch her blushing. “I still have the same problem, though. Instructor Drake won’t be satisfied until I can prove that I can use my power offensively.”

Her knight thought about it for a good minute, long enough that she began sneaking furtive glances at him to relieve her nerves. “As I recall, his specific phrasing was that you needed to be able to ‘overwhelm his shield’, not that you needed to harm him or destroy him.”

“Why does that matter?”

“It means you might be able to prove yourself against him after all, my lady.” Her knight said thoughtfully, holding a hand out to her. “It’s still early. If we leave now, we should be able to find a quiet place to practice.”

“Practice?” Bezel wondered, and reached for his hand. “But I can’t cast an incineration wave!”

“I wouldn’t ask you to.” Her knight said with a smile as he pulled her up to her feet. “I’m going to teach you something else.”

 

***

 

_ Royal Gardens _

_ Sundown _

 

Magic, Bezel knew as any mage did, required three elements; will, focus, and intent. Will was what gave a mage access to his power, which was drawn from within or from the living world. Focus was what shaped the mana into its form, and intent guided what a spell did.

“I’m not questioning your power.” Her knight explained, as she held up a hand glowing with blue light and he held up his own gauntlet, which was surrounded by a green nimbus streaked with faint traces of blue. “Your will is strong...stronger than most people’s, I think. And your focus is there, you channeled that wave, and you’re able to direct your magic to much smaller and delicate work. It’s the  _ intent _ that’s tripping you up. You’re casting a spell that everyone says kills, and you don’t want to do that.” The knight flexed his hand, then dismissed his aura. “When I was assigned under Knight Commander Sloane in the RRD, he said that he knew mage knights of the lower colors on the spectrum who consistently defeated stronger goes. I wondered how that could be, and then I started doing extra training.” He smiled faintly, pain buried underneath, as he kept going. “While I had the chance, anyways.”

“One of the people you lost at Zolim taught you, didn’t they?” She asked, and her knight nodded once.

“She was a tough old bird, but she taught me more about fighting than three years of training at the Academy did in the weeks I worked under her.”

“I’m sorry.” Bezel whispered. He shook his head, and the distant expression faded.

“Thank you, my lady. But she would prefer that we spent our time getting you ready for tomorrow instead of reflecting on lives lost.”

And if that just didn’t irritate her again. “We  _ are _ alone, you know. You don’t have to be so formal.”

The knight blinked. “But it wouldn’t be  _ proper _ for me to take liberties with your name so often, my…”

Bezel groaned and stomped her shoe into the ground. “I have an entire castle full of people who want to suck up to me and use damned formalities like a shield! You’re my friend before you’re my knight, you...you…”

“Fine.” He chuffed, and ran a hand through his hair. “Honestly. I’m trying to  _ help _ you here, and you’re trying to insult me.” Her knight’s eyes sparkled. “And you’re terrible at it.”

“Well, excuse me if I don’t get out as much as you do.” Bezel muttered. “Just call me Bezel. When it’s just us...I want someone to look at me as something other than a princess.”

He pursed his lips and nodded slowly. “All right, Bezel. Can we get back to it now?” 

She breathed in and out. Her knight was correct. They had come out here to try and spare herself the embarrassment and pain of another failure tomorrow. With a nod to her knight, she moved back into the pose he’d shown her.

He had done this when he was ten. Instinctively. He had killed men with it to save her.

“It should come to you as easy as breathing.” He said, stepping back away from her and preparing a shield spell in his hand. “Call the mana from within you. Let it bubble up. Picture in your mind what you want to do with it. You don’t want to  _ kill _ with it, you just want them to stop, to go away.” 

Bezel did so, breathing in and out as she felt her mana swell up and move towards her hands.

“An incineration wave...it’s nothing but raw power, unleashed for destruction. But for what you want to do, you need to shape it. Condense it. Give it a blunt edge. Think of a sword. You can swing with the edge leading if you want to cut, to hurt, to kill. But...if you turn it…”

Bezel had seen too many swords in her life, and the analogy worked.

_ Blunt side out. Gather it up.  _

“Don’t hold back.” Her knight went on, still calm, still patient. 

He believed she could do this. 

“Don’t let out slowly. Release it out all at once. Like you wanted to punch someone. Put it all into your fist...and  _ throw it.” _

Bezel drew in a breath, pulled her hand back, and swung it forward with a yell. Her blue aura darkened slightly from the shape of the spell, and to her amazement, it seemed almost solid as it charged for him, a flat-end first cylinder of magic that even surprised her knight.

He yelped in surprise and tried to increase the power to his shield. It wasn’t nearly enough. Bezel’s strike smashed through the barrier and hit him in his chestplate with the force of an enormous hammer, knocking him backwards into an uncontrolled tumble and roll that went on for fifteen feet before he finally lost enough momentum to collapse to a halt flat on his back.

“No!” Bezel shrieked, panicking as she dismissed her magic and ran towards him. “No, no, please no! Did I hurt you? I wasn’t trying to, I swear, I just…”

His sudden laughter interrupted her fearful episode and left her stunned. Her knight threw an arm across his face as he kept on laughing, loud and long and unrestrained.

“You...you just...knocked me ass over teakettle!” He got out between guffaws. Fear gave way to relief as Bezel slumped to her knees beside him, finally laughing in concert with her guardian after a few more seconds. When his laugh finally gave out, he pulled his arm away from his eyes and smiled up at her.

“You’re really okay?” She asked again, needing to know.

“Oh, I’m bruised and I’ll be a little sore tomorrow, but it’s nothing I need to see a healer for.” He reassured her, grinning like an idiot. The sheer amount of emotion on display calmed her, he wasn’t hiding behind pretenses any longer. “Bezel, that was...that was  _ incredible. _ I’m so proud of you.”

“I just did what you said.” She mumbled, blushing under the praise. She reached down to the armor over his chest and traced the metal with her fingertips, searching for the dent she was sure she’d put there.

It was small, but it was there, not even visible. At least not in dim light. His eyes went wide and he didn’t blink as he watched her.

“I hurt you.” Bezel said softly, feeling the small divot in the metal. “Your armor…”

“It’s armor. It can take it.” He said, and slipped an armored glove off, then laid his own bare hand over her own, pressing it against his breastplate. “I wanted you to do that.”

Bezel drew in a shallow breath, not daring to move as their eyes met. He was holding her hand.  _ He was holding her hand to his chest. _ “You wanted me to hurt you?” She whispered.

“No.” He said, still smiling confidently. “I wanted you to  _ defeat _ me. And you did. You do that tomorrow, Bezel, and Instructor Drake won’t be able to say anything against you.” He patted her hand twice, then released it and started to sit up, and she fell backwards in blind panic. Her knight reacted, tried to catch her, but all he succeeded in doing was grabbing onto her and being pulled back down himself, with her lying on her back and staring up at him as he loomed over her body, neither of them daring to breathe.

He seemed just as stunned by the position with their legs tangled beneath them, and neither moved for a bit. Decorum finally won out as he blushed himself and pushed himself up and away from her. “Clumsy of me.” He muttered to himself, offering her a hand. “I apologize for my...clumsiness.”

“I’m fine.” She squeaked as he pulled her back up to her feet, and suddenly found she couldn’t look at him.

“Um.” He coughed. “Maybe we should...Practice.”

“Practice.” She repeated numbly. 

“Yes.” Her knight quickly agreed. “You need to be able to do that in the work of a few moments. If not even less time.” He dusted himself off, walked back several steps and snapped up a shield. “You knocked me down once, Bezel. Let’s see if you can’t do it again.”

She didn’t know what possessed her to say it, but a quick surge of courage made her smirk as she channeled her mana back into her hand. “I knocked you down  _ twice _ , dear knight.”

“Oh ho ho.” He laughed, and she beamed wider. “Then make it three for three, my princess.”

 

***

 

_ Royal Training Hall _

_ The Next Afternoon _

  
  


Instructor Drake, if anything, saw Bezel as even less of a threat than he had the previous day. She took up her stance, he counted off fifteen paces away and positioned himself in the duelist’s posture with his dominant hand and shoulder leading out to diminish his cross-section, and held up his hand out towards her, palm open and away.

“Whenever you are ready, your highness. Cast an incineration wave, and try to hit me.”

Bezel drew in a breath and lit her aura up, blue light forming around her arms and fingers like a second skin. She glanced over her left shoulder to her knight, standing up against the wall on the side of the wooden-floored training room. He was standing at attention, but only just. There was no real stiffness to his posture, he was relaxed. When he saw her looking, the smallest smile came to his face.

He had faith in her. 

“You should prepare your shield, sir.” Bezel said to the veteran royal knight. “I do not want to harm you.” The simple ponytail of her red hair danced slightly between her shoulders as she spoke. 

The middle-aged man raised an eyebrow and smiled a little. “I should think you would be more concerned about your impending failure than my own condition, your highness. But I shall oblige you.” He crafted up a thin shield of blue magic, then gave her the slightest nod. “Whenever you are ready. Try to overpower my shield.”

_ Pull it into you. Gather it in your hand. _

Bezel pointed her leading foot towards the man, just as her knight had showed her. She concentrated on the feel of the magic, the beat of her heart as the magic pulsed with it.

_ Pack it in. Make it into a fist. _

She brought her glowing hand slightly behind her, breathed out loudly, breathed in loudly.

_ Don’t hold anything back. Release it all at once. _

She shouted, punched her hand forward, and let go of the spell. Not an incineration wave. A  _ Repulsion Blast _ , as her knight had decided to call it after being upended for the fourth time last night. 

Solern Drake had only a moment to realize that she wasn’t firing the droning, endless burning river of power that was an incineration wave before the shot hit. He tried to funnel more power into his shield, but just like her knight had discovered last night, a shield kept too weak was useless against her attack. He let out a cry as the blast struck him full in the chest and  _ threw him _ across the room to smash backfirst against the wall.

All the other royal knights who had been training  _ (And watching her while pretending not to look like it) _ stopped what they had been doing and stared as the man who could best any of them on a bad day with one arm tied behind his back slumped to the floor in a dazed heap, his fine silken shirt and leather jacket rumpled and marred. 

“Instructor!” One of the other royal knights cried out, and then they were racing towards him, moving to render assistance and healing spells. Bezel was a little alarmed at how easily she’d overpowered the man, but she couldn’t help a thin sliver of pride and vindictiveness to cut through it either. She looked back to her knight for reassurance.

He just smiled narrowly and nodded at her. 

 

It took a good minute before Solern Drake was back on his feet, red in the face, mad as a hornet, and glaring at Bezel like she had performed some unspeakable crime.

“ _ That _ was...that was  _ not _ an incineration wave!” He snapped.

“No.” Bezel answered, shaking her head. “That was a  _ Repulsion Blast _ .”

“You were  _ meant _ to use an incineration wave, your highness!”

“No.” Bezel glared back at him, lifting her chin and for once not ashamed of relying on the training of royal presence and authority. Instructor Drake deserved to feel it, full blast. “You told me that I needed to overwhelm you with my magic. I have done that. Your lesson has been passed.” 

The man’s face twisted up into an ugly snarl, like he wanted to yell at her but knew he could not, because of her status. “Who taught you that?” He hissed. Bezel hesitated. “ _ Who. Taught.  _ **_You. That!”_ **

Bezel flinched and fell back a step, her royal mien melting in the face of the man’s unconscionable anger. 

“I did.” Her knight suddenly announced, and every eye in the room turned to look at him. The outlier. The royal knight who gave lip service to the uniform of the royal knights and remained an RRD Knight at heart. His gray-blue eyes were calm, but hard as he looked back at the instructor. “You were teaching her wrong. She’s different from your other students. What works for them wasn’t working for the princess.”

Unflinching in the face of a man who held a higher rank than he did. Unafraid, and always brave. Bezel stared back at her knight, and found it hard to look away. Even now, here, in Drake’s domain, he defended her, uncaring about the slings and arrows that would come his way.

And they did come.

 

_ “You?” _ Drake bit the word off, and he dusted off his uniform and bore down on her knight with one angry footstep after another until he towered over the adolescent. “A fledgling mage knight, barely out of basic training and squiredom? You  _ presumed _ to think you were worthy of teaching royalty?”

“You weren’t.” Her knight countered. “Someone had to.”

 

It happened fast, and yet Bezel knew that her knight had let it happen. Drake’s face was a rictus of rage, and he drew off one of his duelist’s gloves and  _ slapped _ the boy hard across the face with it. Bezel gasped along with the rest of the training room, her hand rising to cover her mouth. 

The elder royal knight had just challenged her knight to an  _ honor duel _ . 

Her knight worked his jaw around a little, clearly feeling the sting of it. He wasn’t looking at her any longer, but she could see stormclouds gathering behind his eyes.

He ripped off his gauntlet and smashed it across the man’s cheekbone with the hard sound of metal striking flesh, and Instructor Drake fell back, gasping in pain and bleeding openly. “I accept.” Her knight growled out. “Heal yourself first. As the challenger, you name the place and time. As the challenged, I name the terms of the duel.”

“Here.  **Now.** ” Solern Drake hissed, cupping his face as another one of the royal knights raced up to address the injury. “And if you lose, you will surrender your position in the royal knights as the guardian of her royal highness, Princess Bezel Lantea.” The declaration made Bezel’s face pale.

Her knight huffed once, not even flinching at it. “Done. And when I win, you will write a note to the Mage King declaring that the princess has exceeded your skill level. Your Second?”

“I will be his Second.” One of the other royal knights declared, racing up to stand beside his instructor with fire in his eyes.

“Duggins. I should have known.” Her knight said flatly, clearly knowing the older boy and clearly not impressed by him.

“And who will be  _ your _ Second, I wonder?” The other knight sneered at him.

“I need no Second. I fight my own battles. Unlike  _ some _ people.” Her knight countered. 

“Ha! The regulations of an honor duel  _ require _ a Second.” The other knight named Duggins laughed. “Without one, you forfeit automatically.” That finally did make her knight flinch, and she quickly scanned the room for anyone who might volunteer for it.

Not a one did. Not a one so much as smiled or called out a word of encouragement for her knight. He stood alone, and Bezel’s heart sank as she realized what that meant.

He had always stood alone in this place. He had  _ always _ been an outcast among them. But he stayed anyways, in spite of being ostracized. He stayed for one reason.

He stayed for her.

 

“I will be his Second.” She blurted out, caught up in a wave of rash impulse that she didn’t dare silence before it ended. To that, the gasps were even louder than when Drake had slapped her knight in the face and started the charade. Her Knight turned and looked at her with the same surprise, but there was a faint glimmer of something else there as well. Something she didn’t recognize, and lacked the time to try and identify.

Drake’s face, so red before, blanched. “You...your highness, that is hardly appropriate…!”

“Not a one of you would stand beside your brother in arms to fulfill the terms of a duel that is being forced on him. If you will not, then by the honor of my family’s name, I will.” She countered, ignoring Drake and staring down the room with as much fire as she could muster, in spite of the wild panicked beating of her heart.  _ This is crazy, this is crazy, this is crazy… _

“I have my Second then.” Her knight recovered, pulling the focus off of her and back onto himself. She breathed out shakily once the eyes were gone from her. “Here are the terms of the duel. Blunted blades, no armor, no lethal magics. The victor will be the one who renders his opponent unconscious.”

“Agreed.” Drake snapped back, motioning to one of the other knights in the room who quickly moved to one of the weapons racks. “I will admit, I have been looking forward to this opportunity for a long time now, boy. A knight from Below, taking a place of honor as a dedicated guardian for a member of the royal family? It grates against everything I stand for. I will enjoy taking you to task and sending you packing back to the RRD rats you scurried out from underneath.” 

Her knight didn’t respond to Drake, but instead walked over to Bezel and breathed in and out, trying to control himself.

“I’m sorry, I...I didn’t mean for this to happen.” She apologized, because it could all go so wrong after this. Drake was the most skilled duelist in the royal knights, it was why he served as the instructor to the royal family. 

“They’ve wanted an excuse for weeks, my lady.” He shrugged. “If it hadn’t been this, he would have found a different reason. I just wish you hadn’t needed to be my Second.”

She swallowed. “Do you not want me to be?”

“I don’t want a Second.” He admitted, smiling sadly. “But if I must have one, I’m glad it’s you.”

“Tell me what to do.” She said, holding on to her courage and wishing for the first time in her life she was wearing more layers than just her training outfit. She was certain her skin was glowing under the dark fabric, and if he saw it…

He shook his head, and after slipping his gauntlet back on, lightly touched her arms. “As my second, you are to observe the duel carefully and make sure that the terms of it are not violated by either party. In the event that they are, you are to declare foul, point it out for all the witnesses in attendance, and call for an end to the match.”

“Blunted blades. No lethal magic. Fighting until unconsciousness.” She repeated the terms, dizzy at what sort of a fight it portended. 

He nodded, his short, curly dark hair ruffled up in spikes over his head. “The other royal knights will create a shield around us for the duel, to contain any magic blasts that might splash outwards. In a standard duel, you would be within your rights to intercede should my opponent continue to fight after violating the terms, but I don’t want you in here if things go wrong. I want you standing outside of the shield where I know you will be safe.”

“I’m not helpless.” Bezel insisted. “Why would he attack me?”

“Because he’s mad with rage, and angry people don’t care about who they hurt.” He said, pain passing over his expression from the ghosts of his past. “Please, Bezel.” 

It was the sound of her name, the honorifics missing, that made her weaken. “It’s not fair.”

“Don’t get mad over the things you can’t change, princess.” He replied. “Do you trust me?”

She blinked at the question. “With my life.” She answered back, meaning every word. And given how he smiled briefly, he knew it too.

 

He stepped back away from her, walking back to the center of the training hall where Drake and his Second were waiting with blunted swords in hand. As Drake and her knight watched, Duggins drew one sword across his bare arm, reversed it, and drew it again to show that the blade was indeed dulled. He repeated it with the second sword, then slipped end caps on the points to blunt them completely. Now they would be swinging steel without an edge; still enough to break bones and inflict blunt force trauma, not enough to pierce the skin or make the other bleed out. 

“Raise the shields.” Duggins ordered, and the room filled with yellow and green light, a mishmash of shields that blurred and blended together for a color somewhere close to dried, sunbleached grass. Inside of it, her knight, Instructor Drake, and Drake’s Second remained. Bezel stood on the outside of the wall with a hand pressed against the blended shield spells, her fingernails scratching against them. 

Duggins stepped to the back of the space, and her knight and Drake squared off and raised their swords in salute.

“No lethal spells. First to unconsciousness loses.” Her knight repeated. Drake snarled and charged in. 

Her knight raised his sword and stood his ground.

 

***

 

At the first clash of blades, Bezel wanted to scream. Drake looked like he was out for blood, and her knight nearly buckled under the mature knight’s downblow until he dodged to the side, shoved the blade away with his own and followed up with a concussive blast of magic that forced the duelist into retreat. Just a few paces, but it was enough for her knight to roll his shoulders and ready himself. “You’re fast.” He said in a quiet drawl that was full of the tension he didn’t voice. “I’ve seen faster.”

“Oh, have you now?” Drake spat back, and his blue aura flared to life, concentrating around his feet. Her knight summoned up his own and Drake lunged again, moving at thrice the speed they had before and displacing air as he did. The instructor’s blade came like a scythe from multiple directions, and Bezel’s eyes goggled.

The Knight deflected every one without shifting his stance once or moving a step, then slammed his free hand forward and struck Drake square in his center mass, releasing a burst of power that knocked the other man back and almost made him lose his footing. It  _ did _ leave his shirt smoking, a hole clean through it, and the skin underneath reddened from a welt.

Bezel gasped in wonder. The other royal knights gasped in shock. Drake, the wind knocked out of him, choked for air. Her knight just  _ stared _ at the older man.

“Surrender, Drake.” He said. “You aren’t going to win this.”

“Like...hell!” Drake snarled, using the precious time to get air back in his bellows. “I will not...stand for some  _ upstart _ Mage Knight from  _ Below _ that is more than half my age betraying the honor of the duel in this way!”

“Honor?” Her knight rumbled, a dark sound that finally revealed the rage he’d been holding onto. Bezel shivered at the sound of it, at the beast inside of the boy. “You want to speak of honor? I doubt it. You’re just upset that I don’t fight like you do.”

“It is not the way of a  _ true knight! _ ” Drake shouted, and came after him again, unleashing a salvo of homing bolts that finally sent her knight running. But he didn’t just run on the floor. Conjuring a shield in his free hand, her knight dashed across the floor at augmented speed, then leapt up and ran along the side of the shield wall surrounding the duel as staccato bursts of aquamarine radiance smashed into the floor behind him and tore up the floor. The rest he either batted away with his blade or used his shield to defend against, and when Drake finally caught up to him with a swift slash, he jumped off of the wall and somersaulted behind the man, twisting his sword over his shoulder to blindly deflect the horizontal slash that followed. Then he turned, knocked the sword away, and smashed his shield spell into the man’s face hard enough to break his nose and leave him dazed. While Drake reeled from the hit, her knight kicked him back  _ against _ the wall of shield spells...then drove the crossguard of his blunted sword, the full weight of a punch behind it, into the man’s dominant forearm.

The sound of breaking bone rang out like a bell, and the scream of agonizing pain that followed was even more so. Drake crumbled to his knees, clutching his right arm with his left while his sword clattered to the floor. 

Her knight calmly jumped backwards to the center of the pavilion, sword pointed down at his side and stared at Drake, then repeated his words from before. “Surrender. Your sword arm is broken.”

“Never.” Drake grimaced, letting his shattered arm dangle freely as he reached for his blunted blade with a trembling left hand. “You’re no knight. You’re a brute, a barbarous Below-er! With blade and with magic, that is how true Mage Knights duel! You fight without honor, boy!”

Bezel’s hands trembled as she watched it all, and she clasped them together to keep them from shaking too visibly. She caught sight of a glimmer of magic in Drake’s sleeve, the sign that he had not yet given up.

_ Don’t lower your guard _ , she thought desperately, hoping that her knight would see it. 

“I don’t think any of you actually remember what that word means.” Her knight mused, walking slowly in a semicircle in front of Drake as he struggled back to his feet. “But I do.” His head turned slightly to the side, to Drake’s Second. “Knight Duggins. Your primary is incapacitated. I offer him the chance to surrender without further pain and submit to the terms to the duel.”

Duggins was clearly shaken at the skill and ferocity her knight had demonstrated. “Sir Drake, you should…”

_ “NO!” _ Drake shouted, and his aura flared to life, going from a soft blue to the darker hues of cerulean. “I refuse to submit to someone who uses underhanded methods!”

“Who do you fight for?” Her knight asked the injured fellow.

“For my honor, for the honor of the royal knights, for the royal family!”

“That’s why you lost.” Her knight growled out. “You don’t train hard enough. You don’t have enough to fight for. If you had been down in Zolim like I was, you would have died in minutes.”

“Wait. Zolim?” Drake’s eyes widened, and everyone stilled at that. Bezel bit her lip. It had not been common knowledge, or spoken of publicly that he was the lone knight to survive who had been in the heart of that event. She had done her best to keep it quiet when asked, even to the point of belittling her knight to others when asked about it. “That Code Violet...That was  _ you?”  _ Drake went on, scowling. “Impossible. You’re just a boy.”

“I was there. I learned from the best. You know how to duel, Drake. I know how to  _ fight _ . Last chance. Surrender.” Her knight raised his sword up, pointing the blunted end right at his opponent. “You already require hospitalization. Don’t make it worse on yourself.”

But Instructor Drake rocked on his heels, and funneled his magic into his sword. Bezel instantly recognized the enchantment on it; a sharpening augmentation.

“Watch out!” She screamed as Drake rocketed for her knight, his sword’s dulled edge gleaming with magic that made it as sharp as any sword ever was. “He’s…”

If he tried to block it, Drake would slice his sword in half and then gut him for his trouble. If he summoned a shield spell, the blade would eat through it. 

Her knight did neither, because he didn’t fight like the royal knights. He didn’t fight to demonstrate technique or to be flashy. He just  _ ended the fight. _

He ducked out of the way of the first blow, rolled from the second, slashed up wildly and had his sword sliced in half with the third. But it bought him the time he needed to piledrive into the injured man, grab him by his good arm, and use leverage and torque to flip him completely over while dislocating his shoulder at the same time.

He was finally breathing hard after the exertion of lifting a man close to seventy pounds heavier than he was, but it had the desired result. The fight was well and truly ended.

“You attempted to use a lethal spell after being offered the chance of surrender. Twice.” Her knight growled at the barely conscious man, now sporting two broken arms. “By the terms of the duel, your services with Princess Bezel are no longer required. I will be handling her training from now on.” 

Drake’s eyes went dull, and he passed out at last from the pain. Her knight just stared at him for a few moments, then turned and addressed the Second. “Duggins. Get him to the hospital.” Then he turned, eyes still full of thunder, and walked for Bezel. The shield spells that had been layered around them dissipated one after another, clearing the way.

Bezel knew that he was skilled, he’d survived the Zolim Incident, after all. But knowing that he was skilled, and seeing it being displayed so clearly were two different things. 

Everyone else, men and boys just a little older than he was, all stepped back and cleared him a wide path as he walked on. She could see the fear in their eyes. All their pride about being royal knights had just been shattered in minutes. Her knight checked his sword and its scabbard one last time as he rejoined her, then nodded. “Your lessons are done, your highness. Where do you need to go next?”

“I…” Bezel croaked, wincing and coughing to collect her thoughts. “Escort me back to my room, knight. I have studying to do.”

“As you wish.” They left the training hall behind and made their way back to her chambers. The entire time, she was sure she was a bundle of raw nerves, held together only by the need to keep up her idyllic appearance and his presence. 

As soon as they were in her rooms and the door was shut, she whirled on him. “You...you just…”

He seemed sad. “Are you afraid of me now?”

“What?” Bezel blinked. “No! No, never.” Her answer was quick and horrified. “Did you think I could hate you?”

“I saw how you looked during the fight. You were terrified.”

“ _ For _ you!” She snapped, pounding a fist on his chestplate. “Please, never do that again! He could have hurt you!”

“No. He really couldn’t have.” Her knight said flatly. “I’ve faced  _ exenos _ and a thing from beyond the Veil that thrived on Lies and pain. Compared to them, he’s just a bully.”

She pressed her forehead against his chest and put her arms around him. “You don’t have to do that for me. You don’t have to defend me from the likes of them.”

“I do.” 

“Why?” Bezel whispered.  _ Why do you care so much? What do you feel for me? _

“I am your knight.” He answered with a sigh. “My life is yours.”

“I can’t believe the royal knights are so...so  _ horrible. _ Not a one of them moved to help you. I’ve trapped you here in a place that hates you.”

His hand came to her back and gently stroked it, and she shivered from the feel of his fingers through the thin cloth of her training uniform. “It’s not  _ so _ bad.” He reasoned.

“Did you mean it?” She asked him.

“What?”

“That you...that you would train me.” 

“If that is your wish.”

“I...I don’t want to kill.” She said hesitantly. “But I need to know how to be better. How to protect myself.”

“I can teach you that.” He agreed. “But you might want to get changed for dinner first.”

She reluctantly separated from him, embarrassed after the fact. Before she turned to leave her parlor for her bedroom, she looked up at him. “I didn’t...Back there. None of them knew had an idea that you were at Zolim. That you were the one who stopped it. That isn’t why I wanted you to be my knight, you know.”

He smiled at her confession. “I know. But it was an answer that would get them off my back for a while.”

She shifted her feet, eyes darting between his face and the floor. “I’m...I’m glad you’re here.”

“I don’t want to be anywhere else.” He said with a shrug, and she turned and walked fast for her bedroom and a fresh change of clothes.

It was getting harder to hide the blushes she felt.

 

***

 

Things were quieter after that. True to his word, and likely due to the pressuring of the royal knight that had been his Second, Instructor Solern Drake did in fact pen a letter to her father stating that she had exceeded his expectations and would in the future be taking lessons on magic use and self-defense from a different tutor. The letter failed to specify who that tutor was. What training she asked for, her knight gave her out in the gardens, and he placed a high focus on endurance, basic conditioning, and a more varied regimen of techniques beyond magic. Beyond that, she found that the hole in her schedule freed up time for her to continue her experiments in artificing, a hobby that interested nobody in the palace save for her knight.

But there were strange days as well. Every second end-day of the week, her knight was allowed the day off, and Bezel would seek him out, hoping to join him in a relaxing activity, or a trip to the park, or something equally innocent and enjoyable. But both times, he had slipped out of the barracks and disappeared. After he disappeared the first time, she had asked him what he’d been up to, and he cryptically stated that he had been running  _ errands _ . The second time, she was a little less polite about it, informing him that she would have liked to go with him to a park or anywhere else. He’d felt badly about it, but again insisted that he had been taking care of something important, something that had to be done. His sincerity had mollified her, but her curiosity only grew.

The third time that his day of rest approached, Bezel prepared for it. She set a magical alarm so she could wake up earlier in the morning, before the sun even came up. Dismissing her lady’s maid last evening, she had told the woman to take the morning off. It gave her the freedom to carry out her plan, but it did keep her from wearing any of her more complicated garments. For lack of anything more subtle, Bezel settled on her training uniform, a set of soft leather boots, and a vest with enough pockets to store money and a few of the trinkets she had been working on recently. Tying her hair back in a loose tail that would have made her lady’s maid gasp in horror, Bezel slipped on a dark purple cloak with a hood that she used when it was raining and tiptoed through the corridors of the castle towards the royal knight’s barracks. Upon reaching it in the castle’s north wing, almost situated on the lowest level, she ducked into the shadows of a cleaning closet’s doorway and waited for her knight to emerge.

She had anticipated his departure by only five minutes. When the door to the barracks opened, her knight stepped out without any of his usual armor or adornments. Instead, he wore only a loose shirt of knitted plant fibers, his own leather boots, and comfortable though well-laundered and faded leggings. Of his office, he kept only his sword, tied to his belt in its usual place. He glanced once around the hall and Bezel ducked deeper into the shadows, trying to make herself look as small as she ever had in her life. Whatever he was looking for, her knight didn’t find it, and he nodded to himself in satisfaction before walking in the opposite direction. Towards the kitchens, Bezel realized, as she followed a few moments later after he turned a corner.

Trying to keep up with him was a delicate balancing act, and she was glad that she had worn soft-soled boots. His crisp cadence, even quieted by the early hour, gave her a signal to follow and muffled her own presence. She caught sight of him slipping through the servant’s entrance as she made the last turning, and quickly hedged over, pressing her ear to the door. Nothing but muffled voices, and she risked cracking it open to hear more clearly.

“...all business, aren’t you? And without so much as a how do ye do?” The airy voice of a woman with a thick Eurosian brogue seeping into her Atlantean was the first thing Bezel overheard. 

“I’m in a hurry is all, Moira.”

“Oh, aye? A hurry, is it? On your day off, when you’re dressed like that? You’re not going anywhere to start trouble or finish it, so you can linger around and tell dear Aunt Moira what you’ve been up to.”

“You’re not related to me, you know.” Her knight said, and Moira must have smacked him with something, because he yelped right afterwards. 

“Now don’t be sassin’ your Aunt Moira, lad. You’ve not even grown any fuzz on that chin of yours, so until you do, you be respectful, d’ye hear?”

“...Yes, Miss Moira.” He sullenly replied, and Bezel smiled into her hand to keep from giggling. She didn’t know this woman, had never seen her, but she liked her already.

“Good. Now that that’s settled, I’ve your parcels here as usual. A bit more than you asked for last time, though. Are you sure you can carry it all?”

“I’ll manage.” Her knight said, and Bezel wondered at what he was actually doing. Was he making off with food from the kitchens? Why? Bezel had heard stories of servants being sacked and punished for theft and malfeasance; stolen silverware, bottles of fine wine being walked off with, jewelry missing. The punishments were typically severe.

If he was doing anything like that...She had to stop him, and stop it now. She couldn’t bear to see him arrested and carted off to suffer hard labor Below like others had in the past. She would save him from himself if she had to!

_ Why didn’t you tell me you needed money…? _

He whirled about in surprise as Bezel pushed the kitchen door open and walked in, a plump middle-aged woman with graying fair hair sizing her up as well.

“I’ve finally caught you, it seems.” Bezel said airily, pulling her hood back and glaring at her knight with her green eyes. She looked between the woman (Moira) and her knight, and crossed her arms. “So this is where you go on your days off, my knight.”

“Princess Bezel.” Her knight said, shocked but not looking panicked by any measure. If anything, he seemed exasperated. “What are you doing here? This is hardly the place for royalty.”

“Oh, stuff it.” Bezel muttered back, and Moira gasped a little. She sighed. “Are you stealing?”

“No, never my lady!” Moira gasped and quickly denied the charge. “He never takes food that is to be used by the castle, he only takes the scraps, leftovers, and the items that we’d have to throw out anyways!”

She breathed a little easier at that, and she looked at her knight, whose face had darkened.

 

“You followed me.” He said, working his jaw. She nodded. “You think that I am...what, exactly?”

“You said it was errands. But what errands would require you taking kitchen scraps and expired food? I don’t want to see you lose your job over a misunderstanding. You are my guardian, and I find that I prefer you in the role over any other Mage Knight.” She answered sadly. “What secret are you keeping from me? Are you selling the castle’s food for profit? Perhaps splitting it with Moira here?”

Bezel had seen him angry at others before, but she had never seen it directed at her. Her knight just stared at her, his face twisted between hurt and fury in a combination that left her wanting to apologize. But for what?

“...No. I’m not  _ selling _ anything.” He spat the words out like hot coals. 

She looked away. “Are you...is there a girl out in Atlantis you visit? One you take food to, perhaps?”

“Do you think I have the energy or means to find and date another woman when I’m stuck with  _ you _ almost every day?” Her knight shot back, and the hot words dug into her skin. Moira gasped.

“You! You can’t say that to her, she’s the blooming  _ Princess!” _

“Yes. She is.” Her knight growled out, and the rumble from his chest pulled her wide eyes back to him. “And I thought she trusted me.”

The words stung at her. “I do trust you!” Bezel cried out, walking towards him. “You are my knight! I trust you with my life!”

“But you don’t trust me with my secrets.” He accused her, and took a step back before she came within arm’s reach.

His reserve stopped her cold. “I…” She started, blinking widely. “I didn’t think there were any secrets between us.” She said in a quavering voice.

Her knight stared at her for several long seconds, then sighed loudly. “You’re going to be a pain about this, aren’t you? Do you  _ really _ want to know where I go on my days off?”

“Yes.” She said, grasping at the opportunity.

“Do you ask because you’re just curious, or do you ask in earnest?” He asked her seriously. 

She pressed her hand to his chest, and felt his steady heartbeat under her hand. It picked up in tempo as she kept her fingers there, and they stared at one another for several long seconds.

Moira broke the moment with a clap of her hands. “Honestly, look at you two. Princess, you’re not carrying on with some secret love affair with this scruffy, lovable oaf, are you?”

Bezel’s face burned hotly, and she ripped her hand away, stepping back and shaking her head wildly. “No! Of course not!”

Moira just laughed. “Why not? I would, if he were my age!” Bezel gawked at the woman, and Moira just laughed harder. “Aah, you two. Couple o’ dearies.”

Her knight wasn’t immune to Moira’s teasing either, and he was blushing as brightly as she was, Bezel thought. He cleared his throat twice, then looked at the ground. “If you want to come with me, Bezel, you’ll have to change. Where we’re headed, you don’t want to be dressed like royalty.”

“Ach, leave it to me, lad.” Moira said, sweeping over to Bezel and resting her worn hands on her shoulders, pushing her to another door. “She’s about the same size as me dear daughter was. I think I’ve still got some of her old things tucked away in my room.”

“What?” Bezel squeaked, still embarrassed. “No, you don’t have to, it’s all right, I can go back and change into…”

“Something that’d still make you stand out like a sore thumb where he’s headed, love.” Moira insisted, pushing her along. “I’d normally be agog at sending royalty out unescorted, but...Well. You’ll be going with him, so I think he’ll protect you.”

_ He always has, _ Bezel thought, and wondered what she would learn about her knight today.

 

***

 

The clothes Moira had loaned to Bezel were not perfectly tailored, and were loose in the chest and tight around her hips. Moira’s daughter had apparently been an early bloomer, and she adjusted them as they walked on. Her bright red hair was tucked underneath a bonnet, and in place of her soft boots, she now was wearing hard-soled shoes that pinched her toes slightly. They were coarser than anything she’d ever worn before, but they were remarkably close to the clothes that her knight was dressed in. They each carried a handled cloth bag full of wrapped and sealed parcels, walked out into the streets of Atlantis as the sun rose in silence, and stuck to the quieter backroads and alleys. 

They approached a checkpoint staffed by members of the city guard, and Bezel tensed up as they neared. Her knight leaned over and nudged her elbow with his own. “Act casual. Don’t say anything.” He said softly, then waved to the guards at the checkpoint, making sure his sword was visible. 

Taking note of it, the guards seemed to recognize him and waved him on. “Bringing company with you this trip, eh?” One of them asked lightly.

“More than usual to carry.” Her knight explained, not once breaking stride. Bezel kept her head down and followed, sure that at any moment she would be recognized as her heart beat wildly.

The checkpoint guards never gave her a second glance, and she sighed in relief once they were on the other side and out of earshot of them. Her knight turned and looked over at her, smiling slightly. “See? You did fine.”

“I just know that I’m going to get in trouble for this.”

“You didn’t have to come, princess.” He reminded her calmly. “You’re the one butting in on my one day off I get every two weeks.”

She winced. “I...You’re right. I’m sorry.”

He nodded once, turned his head back forward and kept on walking. Bezel took the time to examine their surroundings in the early morning light, and steadily, she began to notice that the neighborhoods changed. They had passed from the inner circle of Atlantis to the middle ring, where the middling castes of artisans, guildworkers, and others of their rank stayed. The mansions disappeared and were replaced by houses, well-taken care of but clearly of lesser cost and value, made from less pricey materials and compacted into smaller areas. This wasn’t the route that had led to the park where they first met. This was leading somewhere else. 

“...Where are we going, sir knight?” She asked him carefully, wincing as her shoe pinched at her foot again. The smooth roads of the inner district had been replaced with cobblestone streets, and were harder to tread on.

“We’re making a delivery.” He said, walking on. “Try to keep up. We’ve got about another twenty minutes’ walk ahead of us yet.”

“But we’ve already walked so far!” She protested. 

“Are you scared? You want to turn back?” He asked, and held out his other arm. “Promise never to follow me on my day off again, hand over your bag, and we’ll never speak of this again.”

Bezel wasn’t entirely sure, but it felt like a test. She puffed her cheeks out and shook her head. “No. I said I was coming with you, so that’s what I’m doing.”

He smirked at her. “You complain a lot. Is that because you’re royalty or because you’re a girl?”

“Why, you…!” She huffed. “Stop teasing me!”

“Stop making it so easy.” He replied, and started walking again. “Come on, Bezel.” Her irritation at him helped to spur her forwards, and she stopped thinking about her shoes.

 

She had more to worry about after they passed a second checkpoint, and found themselves in a far more rundown neighborhood with streets made of packed dirt and gravel. The houses became smaller and more dilapidated, factories and workhouses took up more space, and then at last, there were shacks. Everything was dirty and in need of repair, but there were no signs that such work was forthcoming.

It was appalling to look at.

“Where are we?” Bezel whispered. This didn’t feel like Atlantis.

“The outer district. The portion of Atlantis where the lower castes, the workers who work in the factories and refineries can afford to stay.” He said, still unfazed. “Why?”

“I...how can a place like this exist? Here? On Atlantis?!” Bezel stammered. “We’re not Below! Atlantis is supposed to be the beacon of hope for humanity!”

He came to a stop, and she stumbled to a halt to keep from crashing into him. Then he turned and looked at her, and something deeper than usual hung in his blue-gray eyes.

“Did you really think everyone lived in castles?” Her knight asked her softly. “You wanted to see where I went on my days off, princess. I gave you the chance to turn back. But you’re here now. So come on. What are you really upset about?”

“I don’t know.” She muttered. “But this is wrong.”

“Was it ever right?” He asked, looking around with old eyes. 

“How did you know this was here?” She asked him. Her knight always knew so much, but this was one time she needed to know how. How did he know that a place like this existed, when she didn’t? When she had never been told about it?

He breathed in almost silently. “I grew up around here.” He explained, and started walking again.

Bezel stood frozen for several seconds, letting that tumble in her mind. 

Her knight had lived in this squalor. Had been born in it. 

She didn’t know whether to cry or scream.

 

***

 

They found themselves in front of a large one-story building that advertised itself as a ‘shelter’ and walked inside, where they were met by a tired looking man and woman in their early 30’s that greeted them warmly. The knight quickly introduced them as Samiel and Willys Geene. 

“We’re so glad you came back.” Samiel said, shaking her knight’s hand warmly and taking the first sack of food. “And you brought a friend this time!”

“Hello there, dear.” Willys Geene cooed, taking the bag from Bezel and setting it down before pulling the girl in for a warm, squishy hug. “What’s your name?”

“She’s Ella.” Her knight said in a casual tone as she froze to think of one that wouldn’t immediately betray her true identity. “She just started working in the kitchens at the castle. I needed a little extra help carrying things, so I invited her to come along.”

“Oh, wonderful!” Willys beamed, giving Bezel’s cheek a wet kiss that made her squeak in surprise. “We could always use more help. You  _ are _ staying to help, aren’t you?” She asked with hopeful eyes.

“Of course she is. I’m staying after all, so she is as well. Aren’t you,  _ Ella _ ?” Her knight said, pointedly enunciating her false name.

Bezel blushed under all the attention. “Um. Yes. Of course.”

“Wonderful!” Willys beamed, releasing the girl and grabbing the bag of food again. “So, are you skilled at preparing meals?”

“Uh, not really?” Bezel stammered, trailing along behind the woman. “I’ve just started, and they...they haven’t exactly  _ let me _ do anything like that.”

“Well, now’s a perfect time to learn, I think, Miss Ella.” 

 

The next two hours were a riot of activity and preparation; her knight and the husband Samiel set up tables and readied trays and dishes while Willys and Bezel unwrapped the food that they had brought from the castle and got to work in preparing a meal. In the end, they made several trays worth of sauteed and mixed vegetables baked into a maize slurry, a beef and chicken noodle stew, and a mess of fruit that they cooked down into a loose jam to be spread over a cracker crumble crust for tart slabs. Bezel did her best to help, and in fact had better luck with slicing up vegetables than she would have thought. Her time in runecrafting and artificing with sharp knives and etching into stones paid off, but the finer techniques of cooking eluded her. She was almost positive that if Willys hadn’t had to watch her every step of the way, the woman could have prepared a much finer meal, even with the scraps brought from the castle. Willys still pronounced the meal a success when her knight and Willy’s husband came back into the kitchen to check on their progress. Bezel was tired and exhausted after the work, and she felt the need to pose a question.

“What’s all this for?” She said. “Are you having a party today?”

“A party?” Samiel frowned, looking over to Willys. “No. No, nothing like that. This is a  _ shelter _ , Miss Ella.” 

“The people who live here in the slums, they don’t always have enough money to buy the things they need.” Willys explained. “For some families, that means that sometimes they go hungry.” Bezel’s eyes shot wide at that, and she couldn’t help but look over to her knight and wonder.

He didn’t meet her eyes, and she  _ knew. _

“Some mothers have to try and make ends meet on their own. Some parents throw their money away on frivolities. The ones who end up suffering for it are the people who are powerless.” Samiel explained. “That’s why we’re here. These people need the help, and we can give it to them.” He smiled sadly. “I only wish we could do more. Right now, we can only manage the odd meal, and give a few people a warm place to sleep when they lose their home. And those are the lucky ones. The unlucky ones get sent Below.”

Bezel sucked in a sharp breath at that.

_ Oh. _

“The biggest problem is that nobody looks out for each other.” Willys murmured, patting her husband’s arm. “We live on Atlantis. The gem of all of Terra, and yet people struggle for scraps. That’s why my husband and I started this shelter. If you want to make a difference, you have to make it yourself. When your royal knight here found us, he immediately volunteered to help us with these meal days. We don’t see him often, but he’s made a world of difference.” Willys squeezed her hand. “I don’t know if he’s seeing anyone, dear, but you might want to get him interested while you can. He’s going to be a real catch!”

Bezel had never felt so guilty, or so ashamed of herself as she did then. She’d never gone hungry. She’d never slept rough. She’d never had to wonder where her next meal had come from, or if she would slip away in her sleep from hunger or illness.

Her knight had. Her knight had faced every pain imaginable, and yet he still smiled and protected her. He still stayed by her side.

 

At last, it came time to serve the meal. Over two hundred people passed through, most at least twice until the food ran out, and Bezel stared out into a sea of faces she’d never imagined before, had never considered. Only her lessons in etiquette kept the mask of a placid smile on her face as she dished out the stew one ladleful at a time, standing next to her knight who did the same with a more honest smile. Some looked malnourished, others were just gaunt. Some looked ill. The worst faces were the ones of children who passed through the line and stared at the food like it was the first decent meal they’d seen in days.

These were her subjects. These were her people. Suffering. 

 

At the end of it, she had nothing left to give, not even a comforting smile. Pale and nauseous and hurting, Bezel stumbled out of the shelter’s back door, slumped back against the brick wall, sank to the ground, and cried her eyes out. She was still there when the knight appeared and stood over her, watching her with an apology writ plain on his face.

Bezel sniffed and wiped at her eyes with the sleeve of her borrowed servant’s dress. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Some things you need to see for yourself to believe.” He said quietly. 

Bezel nodded at the truth in that. She would have never believed it, even from his mouth, if she hadn’t seen the squalor and ruin with her own eyes. Her knight sighed and sank down to the ground beside her, and she immediately leaned into his side, needing a hug and reassurance. He obliged to pull his arm around her shoulder and hold her close, and she rested her head on his shoulder.

“I didn’t know.” She confessed. “I didn’t know.”

“Now you do.”

“You...you lived like this. You suffered like they are. How did you keep smiling?”

“I had my mother.” He said.

“But you two were sent to Below. And she died.”

“By then...I had you.” He added, and she sobbed again and clutched a fistful of his shirt as she buried her face into him. She could feel him reach into his shirt, and a moment later came the snap of a metal clasp.

**_“You’re so brave. Don’t ever stop being brave.”_ ** The voice of his mother, taken from Bezel’s memories, sounded off again.

She didn’t feel brave at all. But he was so brave. And so strong.

_ I don’t deserve you. _

“This is wrong.” Bezel muttered, finally done crying into his shirt. She sniffled and looked at him. “How can my father and all the advisors under him not see this? How can they let this happen?”

Her knight shrugged, and she knew that he had thought of it as well. Thought of it, and then…

“Don’t get angry over the things you can’t change.” He said, sagely. She’d heard him say it before, but grief and pain for her people, for  _ him, _ made her unwilling to simply accept the pat answer for once. She jerked to her feet and glared, fire returning to her and burning freely.

“And what about the things I  _ can _ change?!” She demanded. 

Her knight paused at that, considering the question. He finally broke out into a smile, stood up, and nodded at her. “Then change them, Bezel.”

“I will.”

“Good.”

They stood there, looking at one another, Bezel wiping her tears away, the knight dry-eyed but resolved. 

_ If you want to make a difference, you have to make it yourself. _

“Are you still glad you insisted on tagging along today,  _ Ella?” _ Her knight inquired. 

“Yes.” She replied, meaning it.

Her knight’s eyes darkened, held a hand out to her. “Do you trust me?”

“With my life.” Bezel said, and slipped hers into his.

 

***

 

_ Four Days Later _

  
  


Bezel had slipped out of her room, beating her knight’s approach, and made her way down into her workshop. It was a small space off of the main royal alchemist’s laboratory that the king had given to her as a gift for her 12th birthday, and lacked the bubbling beakers and the sting of noxious chemicals. What it did have in abundance were polished stones, a bookshelf thick with texts and treatises on runecrafting and spell-forging, scraps of metal and glass and latticed manafilaments and half a dozen projects in various stages of development. 

She consulted her notes and the readings taken on previous days, then examined the output readings from the newest device in question and winced.  _ Uneven mana collection; leyline interference? Need to duplicate experiment Below, confirm results. _

Her door opened, and Bezel glanced over her shoulder to see her knight stick his head inside, looking a little alarmed. He immediately relaxed when she smiled back at him. 

“Good morning, your highness.”

“Good morning, sir knight.” She said, and finished writing out her note. “Come inside and close the door, would you? It keeps the smell from the alchemists out.”

He did so, and there was a faint accusatory note in his voice when he spoke. “You were not in your rooms when I came this morning. You could have told me last night you were coming down here.”

“I  _ am _ capable of wandering around this castle unsupervised, no matter what my father thinks.” She pointed out, and filed the document away. “Grab my cloak, would you?”

Her knight turned to the coatrack beside the door, speaking even as he retrieved her gear. “What are you working on today, Bezel?”

“I’m trying to run an experiment to see if mana absorption from the living earth can be standardized.” She explained. “Some mages have the habit of drawing more than is necessary, while others aren’t able to draw enough as quickly as they need to. This would be a...well, I suppose  _ capacitor _ would be a fitting term for it.” She held up the square-shaped mishmash of etched stone, conductive metal, and manalattice. “Right now, though, the collection rate is too erratic for it to be viable. I’m just not sure if it’s a flaw in my design, or if the path Atlantis flies through the sky is making it vulnerable to the ebbs and flows of leyline interference from everywhere we cross over.” She stared at it for a moment more, clucked her tongue, and set it back into its collecting pad next to the mana monitor. “I need more data to confirm my hypothesis, though.”

Bezel turned about fully and paused, blinking as her knight grinned back at her. “What?” She asked unsteadily.

“You’re really something else.” He explained, shaking his head. “I don’t think anyone else could have come up with an idea like that, much less built it.”

“It doesn’t work yet, sir knight.” She sighed.

“It will.” He insisted. “You’ll get it, I promise.”

“You believe in my creations that much?” Bezel smirked back at him.

“No. I believe in you that much.” He answered, leaving her blinking and wildly flustered. She grabbed her cloak from him and brushed past him, and after they were both out, she locked the door behind her with a wave of her hand and a whispered word.

 

“You seem in a good mood this morning.” Bezel observed as they passed through still quiet workspaces, not yet attended by their workers. She brought her cloak over her shoulders, tied the clasps on the front together, and kept the hood down.

“I suppose I am.”

“You must have heard, then.” Bezel wagered carefully, giving him a sidewards glance. Had he? Her discussion with her father had been last night in private, but it wasn’t unreasonable that the Mage King had thought to mention it to his manservant. From there, the gossip would have spread like wildfire.

“Heard what?” Her knight asked, curious. She looked at him for another moment, then shook her head. Then again, maybe he was just unusually happy for some reason today.

“I had some time available to me yesterday while you were training, so I went and spoke with my father when he was not busy at court.”

“About what?”

“I told him that perhaps a softer hand was called for.” Bezel explained. “That perhaps if we were more generous to the people under our care and protection, they would not be so unhappy, and would thus be in less of a mood to rebel.” And that had been a terribly hard sell; her father was a hardliner through and through, and the mere mention of  _ concessions _ in any form tended to make him foam at the mouth. It had taken every bit of female cajoling, debate technique, and outright emotional blackmail before she’d finally gotten her father to budge. Just a little. “He was not entirely convinced by my arguments, but he did agree that I could sponsor a small effort, in my own name. So, I have a limited budget with which to create some ‘token of charity and goodwill’ as he called it. But I find myself horribly uneducated to whom it could help the most.” 

She turned her head towards him fully and mustered her best blank stare, as they were now out in the more public corridors of the castle. “Perhaps my knight guardian has some idea of where such funds could be placed to do good?”

The corner of his mouth twitched. “I know of a person or two who could use the money, your highness.” And she knew exactly who he was talking about.

Bezel looked back ahead and smiled in triumph. “I thought you might.” Her knight chuckled, and it took everything she had not to laugh along with him.

 

***

 

By the next day off her knight had, Princess Bezel’s charity had been set up and the money was sent along by special courier (her knight, of course, she would trust nobody else with the task) to the shelter in the slums run by Samiel and Willys Geene. They’d had the span of about a week to put it to use, and for once, she wished her knight well on his day off and didn’t worry herself about where he wandered off to. She knew where he would be spending the first part of his day; it was selfish of her to not give him some time to himself. He gave so freely of himself otherwise. To herself, to the Geenes, to people he’d never met before. She felt so small in comparison. The only things she had ever given had been a statue of their first meeting, a necklace with his mother’s face and voice, and now, money to a shelter that housed and fed the poor of Atlantis. 

He had given so much more.

 

The morning after, she had somehow managed to sleep in spite of her nervous energy, but she sprang up at the dawn and raced to dress, leaving her lady’s maid rushing to catch up to her midway through the process. At the woman’s insistence, the loose braid she’d been favoring when she was left to her own devices was ignored in favor of a three part braid that was impossible without help. Only when she was dressed and plaited in accordance to her maid’s satisfaction was Bezel finally allowed to step outside of her chambers, and she glowed when she found her knight standing in his usual place. 

“Good morning, your highness.” He greeted her with the slightest nod of his head, and she nodded back to him. “How are you today?”

“Well. But nervous.” She said, slipping into their old routine of false faces and personalities. “I found myself wondering last night as I went to bed how things were proceeding with the charity you recommended. Have you heard any further details from them, now that the funds have been distributed?”

“I have, your highness.” He said formally. “The shelter your charity has decided to support was able to buy better food for their visitors. They’ve also hired additional workers, expanded the temporary housing, and they were even able to bring in a doctor to treat the sick children.”

“That’s...that’s wonderful news.” Bezel said, and she meant it. “Anything else?”

“The shelter’s owners, Samiel and Willys said that they were grateful to your highness for your kind efforts, but they were confused as to how you had heard of them.”

“Oh?” Bezel said, blinking at that tidbit. Had her knight been forced to out the true identity of Ella?

“I simply indicated that I’d mentioned it back at the barracks, and that the gossip must have filtered up to you from there. They seemed satisfied with the answer.”

“Well. Marvelously done then.”

“They were disappointed, however, that a certain young lady did not come back to help out with food preparation again. Willys had been looking forward to working with ‘Ella’ again, and perhaps improving her cooking techniques.”

It was subtle, and done only after he checked the halls for watchers, but her knight grinned and winked at her after that. Bezel glared at him as he rolled his shoulders. 

“Do you know who this ‘Ella’ is, sir knight?”

“A scullery maid down in the kitchen, I believe, princess.”

“Well. Since she was apparently missed, perhaps you can inquire after her and make arrangements to see that she is there the next time you stop by to check on the shelter’s progress.”

“I will speak to Miss Moira later today about that then, your highness.” The knight said, and the two shared one last secret smile before they walked out and continued towards the dining room for her breakfast with her father and brothers. 

Princess Bezel would find one reason after another to never accept the invitation to the Geene’s shelter. 

Ella, on the other hand, would try and make it as often as she could.

 

***

 

_ The Royal Court _

_ Atlantis _

_ 2 and a Half Weeks Later _

  
  


Princess Bezel did not often make an appearance at her father’s court; she was not a presence in politics, had never been one, had never wished to be. Her eldest brother the Crown Prince had found his role in the art of intrigues and politics, and Jorran in warfare. 

Bezel knew what most thought of her; just a girl with silly ideas in her head, no real power. A piece to be traded off to cement a political alliance. In three years, that was almost exactly what her father intended.

She had other plans now. With the success of her first social experiment buoying her up, with the freedom that her knight’s duel and oath-bound demand had bought her from her family’s immediate expectations, it was time to go farther. 

The courtiers and nobles in attendance, all of them either of Atlantis or rulers of Below currently not down in their domains, watched her as she walked down the elaborate carpet towards the throne. For once, she was dressed in full regalia, her hair was immaculate in an up-do full of jewelry, and she’d even allowed for a  _ hoop skirt _ , useless things that they were. 

She didn’t look for her knight, knew that he had stopped at the end of the carpet as she had kept walking forward. His absence, even momentarily, should have panicked her. But he had squeezed her hand tight that morning while she had been fretting and doubting the wisdom of this impulse, leaned in, and looked into her eyes until she couldn’t look anywhere else but back at him.

_ You are stronger than anyone thinks. Especially yourself.  _

She drew on his faith and her courage as she stopped five paces short of the throne and dipped into a formal curtsy. The Queen’s throne sat empty beside him, as it had for all of her life. “Your majesty.” 

“My daughter.” Mage King Volkas Lantea rumbled, stroking his trimmed beard. “You have requested time for a formal request at court. For what purpose do you come before us today? Is it to report on your charity?”

“It is not, father.” She explained. “Although the charitable works being done in my name are producing great results. The less fortunate of the lower castes here on Atlantis look on the royal family with greater favor now, from the reports I have gathered. No, I come today with a different purpose in mind.”

“You wish to spend more of my money, daughter?” King Volkas Lantea suggested lightly, and the room filled with low chuckles and high titters from the men and women who hid their predatory smiles behind hands and expensive paper fans. “Who shall we throw it at now? The farm animals?”

“No, father.” She said, not losing her composure. She had expected a rocky start, he hadn’t given in easily the first time. She hoped this would be an easier sell. “I wish to broaden my horizons.”

The king blinked and leaned back in his throne, while her oldest brother Desmond set a hand on the top of the throne and looked at her with new consideration.

“In what regard?” The king asked in a casual tone that she’d heard him use right before ordering someone thrown into the stocks.

“Brother Desmond is the heir to the throne, and will rule when you fade from Terra. Brother Jorran is a skilled warrior, and will be a vital part of the Mage Knights’ leadership in time. I have thought often of what I might do to be of use to the world as well. I am thirteen, with my fourteenth birthday coming very soon. Yet I have seen very little of Terra, of the domain under our protection. It is a weakness, I think, and one that must be shored up if the house of Lantea is to rule with wisdom and fairness.” She pressed a clasped fist to her breast. “I wish to travel to Below, and see the world, traveling in the lands under our domain and the wilderness beyond. I would know the world with my own eyes, so that when my brother is Mage King, he will have one advisor who will tell him the truth of things.”

“You think that his other advisors would lie to him? Or that mine do to me?” The king pressed her, hands squeezing the armrests of his throne. 

“I think that they would be willing to muddle around inconvenient truths if it suited them.” Bezel smiled. She sensed the trap, but her father wasn’t a cruel man, just a hard one. Make him see the hard logic in something, and he would concede the point. “Perhaps for gain, or to mask their own failings, or to not risk your anger on a given day. But I am of the royal line, your daughter, Desmond’s sister. I have no reason to give anything but the truth of my opinions and experience.” She narrowed her eyes, and summoned up her blue aura around her. “The House of Lantea rules by virtue of our power.” Then her eyes flashed an even more brilliant blue, the aftereffect of the long hours spent training with her knight.  **_“We should rule with wisdom as well.”_ **

She kept her eyes on her father, never wavered, never flinched. She stood strong, displaying her strength and her dedication to her argument. Murmurs passed around the room, some impolite and mocking, while others seemed agreeable, respectful. 

Only one voice in the room mattered, and Bezel let herself be like a mountain in front of its owner. The king stroked at his chin and looked consideringly to his oldest son, standing off of his right side. Desmond must have found something in her words to be of merit, or at the least, humorous, given how he smirked and leaned down to whisper in their father’s ear.

The king listened, nodded, and then looked back to Bezel.

“My daughter, Princess Bezel Lantea, has spoken. My son the Crown Prince finds that there is merit in her suggestion, and I am inclined to agree. It would be good to have someone close to the throne with firsthand knowledge of the places in Terra that may one day cause trouble to our subjects. The particulars we shall discuss later in private; for now, Princess Bezel, you have our blessing to make a tour of the world. But given the recent troubles that have plagued Below, suitable protection will need to be arranged.”

“I have suitable protection, father.” Bezel said, breathing out and releasing the mana gathering around her back into the air. Restored to her normal appearance, she smiled. “My knight guardian shall accompany me.”

“A single mage knight as the sole protection for Atlantis’s only princess?” Crown Prince Desmond protested. “It does not seem suitably adequate, sister.”

“And yet, my knight was the sole survivor from the heart of the Zolim Incident. The one who struck down the fell demon from beyond the Veil when all of his comrades could not.” Bezel declared loudly, and the whispers in the room died suddenly, then increased threefold in number and volume.

She and her knight had talked about it the night before; she had not wanted to bring up that bit of information. He had insisted on it. She’d wanted to protect him from the attention that secret would bring, but he had won out. For them to give way, they needed to know just how strong he really was. 

Bezel registered the shock on the face of her brother, and the less visible arched eyebrows her father displayed. She couldn’t help but smile.

“You told me to find a suitable guardian, father. I selected the best.”

 

“So it would seem.” Her father sighed, and his dark eyes drifted back towards her knight over her shoulder for a long second before he looked back to her. “Very well. Assuming that your knight guardian takes the proper precautions for your safety, you may take him as your escort. I consider this matter closed.” 

The Mage King gestured to his court announcer, who tapped his staff twice on the floor in a heavy cadence. Bezel bowed once more to her father, took three steps backwards while still facing him, then turned and walked out with her royal mien picturesque. She passed by her knight, keeping him in her peripheral vision until he disappeared, and knew by the sound of his armored boots that he had fallen in step three paces behind her. 

They left the court and the lower levels of the palace behind, heading upstairs to the royal suites until they were finally back in her chambers. Only when the door was closed did Bezel let out a happy squeal and whirl about, dancing for joy. 

“He allowed it! He allowed it!” 

“You thought he wouldn’t?” Her knight grinned. “You even managed to convince him to let me tag along.” Bezel stopped dancing at that, scowled, and marched over, poking a finger against his chestplate.

“You are my knight.” She said, not bothering to hide the possessiveness she felt. “Your place is by my side.”

His smile dimmed a bit, and he brought a hand up, taking her own away from his chest and cradling it in his gauntleted hand. “Am I not?” He asked her softly, and Bezel’s racing mind ground to a halt. “I told you, Bezel. I am your knight. Never doubt that.”

She swallowed. “Yes.” She got out, and tried to remember how to breathe. All of a sudden, the corseted dress felt so  _ tight _ and confining.

She didn’t know what went through her knight’s mind then. She never had, not really. There was so much of him that was wrapped up in secrets that he never spoke about unless matters forced him to. Yet every time another glimmer of him was revealed, it just made her admire him all the more.

She loved him, and was falling further into love with every passing day.

 

“We…” Bezel started, pulling her hand away and swallowing to whet her dry throat. “We should...prepare.”

Her knight blinked, and the moment between them ended. “Prepare.” He repeated. “As in, pack?”

“Pack. Yes.” She agreed. “And I need to...to change out of this mess.” She exhaled, feeling more like herself again now that there was space between them. “I’m not going to Below dressed in all this frippery.”

“Will Miss Ella be coming along on this trip as well?” He asked her carefully. 

“Of course.” She replied, because her time following her knight into the slums of Atlantis had made that fact abundantly clear. Princess Bezel would never see the whole picture. She needed to have the freedom to go where she needed to. “Will Miss Moira mind if we borrow more of her daughter’s old things?”

“Oh, I doubt it.” Her knight said. “She’s taken quite the shine to you, honestly. Keeps trying to invite me down to have a cup of tea late at night after the kitchen’s been closed up for the day. But there’s something else you need to remember to bring along.”

“What’s that, my knight?” Bezel asked.

He tapped a finger to the side of his temple. “Your mind. And your experiments.” She blinked and realized how right he was. 

She beamed at him. “The measurements and recordings I need. I can...I can finally take them! Figure out what I’m doing wrong! Oh, you’re  _ wonderful _ , my knight!” She jumped into his arms and kissed his cheek before she knew what came over her. A moment after it happened, the realization made her stumble back with her face burning and her eyes low. “Oh, I’m...I’m sorry, I...I didn’t…”

“You didn’t mean to kiss me?” He uttered, and she looked up to see him rubbing his gauntlet across the side of his face. He was blushing as well, but…

“I...That is, I...I  _ did _ , but…” She wavered, not sure what answer he wanted to hear more. Her heart thundered even louder in her chest than when she’d watched him duel against Instructor Drake. What was the right answer?! 

He stared at her until she ran out of words and fell silent. “Do you trust me?” He asked her.

“With my life.” She responded instantly.

He nodded. “Then...it’s fine. I was not offended.” He looked away as his own blush receded. “But you should be more careful in the future. People...would ask questions.”

And they would be right to, Bezel realized.

“But…” He said carefully, still not looking at her, “If your plans take us into the wilder places of the world, you will not always have to be the princess.”

“Does that mean you’ll leave the guise of my knight behind as well?”

“Never.” He quickly refuted her, meeting her eyes again. “I will always be your knight.” And then he bowed shortly, excused himself, and left her standing in her room with her head swimming and her heart pounding.

She suddenly began to question the wisdom of a trip to Below with him as her sole companion.

 

***

 

_ The City of Zolim _

_ Dalum Province, Aroca _

_ The Below _

_ 2 Days Later _

 

They could have started anywhere. When they’d stood in the harbor of Atlantis with their skyship standing fueled and ready, her knight had taken her to a magical projection of the world of Terra, a globe of blue oceans and green forests and snowy mountains in miniature with dots and lines of the provinces overlaid on it, and asked her where she wanted to go first. 

He had stared at the map after she spun the image of the world, stopped it over Aroca, and jabbed her finger into the city that had almost taken his life. Stared at it, and then at her, as though she were mad.

_ “If I’m to learn of the world that you want to protect and that I am to guide…” _ She’d said to him, trying to sound braver than she felt,  _ “then let us start here.” _

So now, an hour’s flight later after descending from Atlantis during its orbit of the world, Princess Bezel stood beside her knight on the banks of the Great Aroca River, miles upstream from the great city’s edifices and cordoned off mud and brick buildings and huts. There was no great procession that followed them, no train of servants and boxes of clothes and finery. The knight carried his armor, his weapons, a rucksack of clothes, and a traveling case with supplies and funds. Bezel had the clothes on her back, a satchel of her experiments and artificing gear and a hefty purse of contingency funds when they could not draw more from Atlantis’s coffers, a larger suitcase with several fancy dresses and gowns for entertaining, and a few simple dresses and garments borrowed from ‘Aunt Moira’ in the royal castle’s kitchens. 

Anything else, they would find along the way.

 

“Is it strange? Being back here?” She asked her knight. He hadn’t said anything on the flight down, which wasn’t unusual when they were around others who expected her, and expected him, to act in specific ways. Now that they were alone, she had thought he’d be more willing to open up. But he just stared at Zolim on the horizon with empty hands and a clenched jaw.

“It is...different.”

“We don’t have to stay long.” She quickly said. He blinked and looked over to her. “I have to understand.” She went on resolutely. “The...the  _ thing _ you faced, it could not have come here on its own. It was invited, and it had to have taken a great deal of power. The Veil is watched.” She shivered. “Sacrifices. Why would they do that?”

“If you think about it long enough, Bezel, you’ll have your answer.” Her knight said. 

And Bezel had thought about it. When she wasn’t thinking about her artificing or her knight, she was thinking about the event that had almost taken him from her. She wondered how her father, her brothers, everyone who thought like them and acted like them could dismiss the tragedy so easily. 

But then, they had never been chased down and hunted by angry men in a riot just for what their name and their lineage was. They had never stared into the faces of the sick, the hungry, and the dying, and wondered how such people could exist on Atlantis. Could exist anywhere, when there was such wealth and bounty. 

“I’m not good enough for you.” She said, thinking of her knight.

“Hm? What was that, Bezel?” 

She blinked, dismissed the thought away. “Nothing. We should make our introductions to the ruling noble, I think. We won’t stay long, though.” She dug out one of her trinkets, a mana-sensitive monitor that recorded leyline activity. “If at all possible, I’d like to head west for a while. Take some readings of the leylines along the Grand Savannah of North Aroca, before heading back south again. We should have plenty of time to see all of the settlements in the area. Are there any places you would particularly wish to visit?”

The knight considered the question. “I wouldn’t mind checking in at Portstand again. Seeing Knight Commander Sloane.” He looked at her. “Could we do that?”

Bezel smiled at him. Of all the places he might ask to visit…

“I think we can arrange that.” She agreed, and reached for his hand.

 

When Princess Bezel Lantea was thirteen, she decided to learn about the world that her family ruled. She left her palace and her life of easy comforts behind, and decided to walk a harder path.

When Bezel was thirteen, she traveled the world with her knight.

She had never been happier.


	5. She Lived In His Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The princess and her knight continue their tour of the Below, treating it as an escape from Atlantis and a chance to learn more about themselves as well as the world. What is revealed in them through hardship and suffering will not only change the world they live in; It will change them both. If they are brave enough to face it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested music for this chapter is as follows:
> 
> \- "Love Reign O'er Me" by The Who  
> \- "In The Arms of an Angel" by Sarah McLachlan

**_Little Moment: The Sorceress And The Knight_ **

By Eric ‘Erico’ Lawson

* * *

 

**Four: She Lived In His Heart**

  
  


_ Northern Aroca _

_ The Grand Savannah _

  
  


It had been around two weeks since Princess Bezel Lantea had managed to excuse herself from the company of Zolim’s appointed noble, and ever since then, her Knight had served as escort, personal trainer, and campground specialist while they traveled into the wilderness.

Well, the Grand Savannah of North Aroca wasn’t  _ completely _ without civilization, but compared to Zolim and to the other cities, settlements were few and far between. Bezel had been all too eager to race out and minimize her time around others. She had stowed her ceremonial vestments and her fine gowns and had started dressing more frequently in the simple dresses and shirts and skirts that they had borrowed from Moira before leaving Atlantis. The reason was twofold; the first was comfort, because Aroca was  _ warm _ and even the Knight had taken to wearing minimal kit to avoid sweating himself out. The second reason was more probable to being the primary motivation for her, the Knight decided; out here, with nobody else around, she wasn’t the princess, in line for the throne of Atlantis and the rulership of all Terra. She didn’t have to be Bezel Lantea, or even Ella, the pseudoname she’d used to accompany him in the slums of Atlantis. 

Here, in the wilderness, she was just Bezel. He had never seen her happier.

 

The Knight woke up shortly before the dawn, as he had for years now. Three years at the Academy and his all-too short residence in the RRD under Knight Commander Sloane had beaten the habit into him. His eyes snapped open quickly, and he yawned and stretched as his mind slowly reeled itself back in. He reached out with his senses and smelled woodsmoke and heard the faint crackling of new kindling on old embers. He blinked and sniffed, wondering if Bezel had decided to get up early and cook breakfast. It would have been out of character for her; the girl loved to sleep in, after all. Still, there was nobody else around, and the wards he’d erected before they settled in for the night had kept both insects and the larger creatures away from their campsite.

He pulled himself up, still tucked in his bedroll, and looked over to the campfire. The cookstand was in place, but swiveled away from the fire, and the old, dented kettle that the Knight had secured for them in Zolim after Bezel had sold away the more ornate one they’d departed Atlantis with was wafting a fair amount of steam still. 

Bezel had woken up, stoked the fire, and made herself tea, and then disappeared. He could not see her around their campsite. The Knight blinked a few more times, grimaced, and grabbed his sword as he crawled out of his bedroll and flung an overshirt and some decent trousers on. 

She hadn’t gone far, thankfully. Couching his panic and worry behind a disapproving scowl, he slowed his footsteps as he made his way over to where she was sitting under a tree on the top of the small bluff overlooking a tiny creek running a small walk away from their campsite. In the slowly brightening blue sky, with her back to him and a soft breeze blowing around her, she was...she was…

Something must have given him away, because her head turned slightly, cutting into the wind that had been playing in her unbound red hair and the blanket tucked around her slender, curved figure. He didn’t see her face, but he could feel her smile as she spoke up, a tin traveling mug full of tea held in one hand, and one of her measuring devices glowing in the other.

“Good morning, my Knight.” She greeted him, as soft as the dawn and as warm as the sun would be in thirty minutes. For the span of three heartbeats, he let himself feel, want,  _ want _ ,  _ WANT _ …

And then he closed his eyes, took in a deep breath that carried the scent of her soap and her sun-kissed hair and pure Her, tamped it all back down, and came back to himself.

“Good morning, Bezel.” He said in reply, at ease if not entirely at peace, and reminding himself that  _ this is good, this is good enough _ . “You should not be wandering off from the camp like this. What if something were to happen to you while I was asleep?”

“You’re usually up before I am, you know.” She pointed out.

“Clearly, that is no longer the case.” He countered, trying to assert the minimal authority that another year of life and his harsh training and harsher living supposedly garnered to him. “Is something wrong?”

Bezel paused at that, then turned her head back enough to look at him. He could make out the shape of her face, but he couldn’t see the light in her eyes, and he refused to call up a magelight and break the quiet peace of the early morning. “Would you come sit with me, sir knight?”

He did so, allowing himself to feel the tension and the electricity that the simple act of sitting beside Bezel in a place where there wasn’t another human soul for miles brought forward. He only hoped he hid it well enough. She seemed lost in her own mind with something important. She didn’t deserve the burden of his own troubled thoughts. 

When she didn’t say anything for another minute and continued to just sit there, staring across the savannah and taking another small sip of tea to indicate that she was still breathing than from any real desire, his impatience and concern got the better of him. So much seemed reversed now, with her quiet and peaceful, and him, impatient and talkative. Maybe he was just terrible at relaxing. 

“Bezel. Please. What’s wrong?” He asked her.

She let out a single amused huff and took another sip of her tea, then handed the cup over to him. “Nothing. Here, drink some.”

“This is yours.”

“It’s my second cup. Besides, this is one of those times you should just nod, say thank you, and move on.”

The Knight laughed a little, took the cup, and drank the tea. Slightly bitter and oversteeped, but palatable. “Thank you.” He said, completing her circuit of instructions. “Now. Are you going to talk to me? What are you doing out here?”

“Feeling.” Bezel said, and the succinct response made him blink.

“You’re...feeling.” He repeated, and she made a soft murmur of agreement before gesturing with one hand out ahead of them in a 180 degree arc.  “Feeling what, exactly?”

She repeated the gesture. “All of this.”

“Ah.” He said, not understanding her. Bezel caught on, because her nose crinkled up a bit as she turned and glared at him.

“Are you making fun of me?”

“No, Bezel.” He quickly replied, stung a bit by the accusation. “I don’t  _ understand _ you.”

“Oh.” She blinked, reorganized her thoughts, then nodded. “I think I’m getting close to done with all the readings I can take from the Grand Savannah now. But yesterday, I...I tried something different.” She set her mana monitoring device down and powered it off, then breathed in slowly. “I just reached out with my magic, and... _ felt _ for the leylines.”

“You can do that?” The Knight asked, when he got over his shock and stopped staring at her like an idiot.

“Apparently.” Bezel nodded. “But it didn’t...Well. I was  _ feeling _ for the leylines we’re out here to record and chart, but I felt something else instead.” She gestured out ahead of them, and now that he was  _ really _ looking for it, he could catch glimmers of movement in the distance from the corners of his eyes. Creatures moving, prowling around in the grasslands even before the sun came up. “I felt the great cats, and the tusked beasts. I felt the insects and the toothed lizards in the river. I felt the grass.”

Not for the first time around her, the Knight was at a loss for words. She could  _ feel _ all of that?

“Why hasn’t anyone ever talked about this before?”

“Probably for the same reason that nobody ever wrote it down.” She shrugged. “Nobody ever tried to. Or if they did...nobody else thought it was important enough to remember. I was feeling for the magic of the world. Instead, I felt the  _ life _ in it.”

He thought about that for a while, sipping at the tin cup of tea, then drinking out of it more heavily once he realized it was lukewarm. “So. Life is like magic?” He guessed.

Bezel shook her head. “No. I think it’s more than that.” She whispered. “But I’m not...I don’t see the answer yet.”

“You will.” He promised her, because he was her Knight, and he always believed in her. “You’ll get this, Bezel.”

“My Knight has faith in me, then?” She asked him sweetly.

“Yes.” He said, blinking twice at the earnest warmth in that word, and then quickly tempered it. “If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be training you. Even if you are a horrible student some days.”

“Hey!” She shoved his arm after that, jostling him slightly, but not enough to even make him spill any of their shared drink. “Just for that, you don’t get any more tea. Give it back, you.”

Realizing he could use the moment to further her training, he rolled away from her grasp and stood up. “If you want it back,  _ your highness, _ then you’re going to have to catch me.” He taunted her, and took off running.

It wasn’t their usual morning workout, but even with all the screaming that startled the wildlife around them, the Knight wouldn’t have had it any other way.

She was beautiful when she got mad at him.

 

***

 

Though it was technically a vacation away from Atlantis and a means of collecting valuable data about the leylines and the flow of magic around Terra carefully hidden under the veil of a tour of the world that Atlantis ruled over, the Knight still insisted on keeping up with his own training. And hers as well, because she wanted her own training to be thorough.

_ ‘I want to be strong enough and skilled enough to defend myself, and to be able to do so without taking a life.’  _ She didn’t know how tall of an order that really was, but the Knight wasn’t one to back down from a challenge. Neither was Bezel, he had discovered. She could be stubborn and immovable when she was fighting for something she believed in.

Or someone.

They lowered the carved tree branches that he’d made for their spars days ago, Bezel’s face and hair matted with sweat and the knight breathing a little harder than usual. The mock swords looked worse for wear, and he sighed as he realized that they’d reached their limit. To do anything more, he would need decent training equipment. Which meant returning to civilization. “Enough.” He said, setting the branch aside and grabbing for the towels out of his secondary rucksack. “You are improving.”

“Am I good enough to survive an ambush now?” Bezel asked, taking her towel from him and vigorously rubbing the sweat off of herself. 

“You are improving.” He conceded graciously, because she was still a long ways off from being self-sufficient in her defense, magic aside. He saw the towel coming when she threw it at him, and allowed it to strike him in the face, just so he could pull it off and glower at her afterwards while she flipped between pouting at him and giggling. “But you have said yourself, Bezel, you don’t want to take a life. You just want to stop anyone from taking yours.”

She got serious at his assertion and nodded. “It is so.” He hesitated to go on, and she caught him, narrowing her eyes. “What do you not want to tell me?”

“There are...other choices for weapons.” He explained, sighing. She had a way of seeing right through him, and ordinarily, he didn’t mind it. In this moment, it was irksome. “The staff, or quarterstave, doesn’t see active use among the Mage Knights. Swords are the regulation weapon. But I did do some training with one when I was assigned to the 242nd under Knight Commander Sloane.” There was a pang of regret as he remembered Lieutenant Baynes, and how the fierce woman’s harsh extracurricular training had been what saved his life during the Zolim Massacre. But it hadn’t saved her.

Bezel brought a hand up and brushed her red hair back over her shoulder, considering the idea. “A quarterstave. Hm.”

“Of course, I’m hesitant to trust your life to a carved stick of wood.” The Knight added. She blinked, then pointedly looked down to the training weapon and then to his. He sighed and rolled his eyes. “Point made. But still.”

“Would it not be better if I could get my hands on one and decide for myself?” She asked him. “Isn’t that one of the things you said once, that some weapons didn’t work for every person, and there was probably one way of fighting that a person would be better at than others?”

“I did.” The Knight conceded. She perked up a little at winning the argument, and he shook his head. “But there’s nowhere around here we could get our hands on one.”

“Would they have one at the base you were first assigned at? The one I found you in after Zolim?” Bezel asked excitedly.

“Yes.” He blinked. “Why? I didn’t think you were done out here.”

“I’ve taken all the readings out here in the Grand Savannah that I need. And yes, I have data to review and things to think about, but I can do that anywhere.” She looked around, a whimsical smile on her lips as her eyes gazed around the wilderness. “I really did love it out here, though. Just the two of us. No titles or…”

“Just me. And just you.” He said, and she slowly turned her head back around to look at him. She was going to miss this, he realized. It made him impulsive, and he blurted out the first thought that came to mind. “We don’t have to go, if you don’t want to.”

Bezel blinked a few times, then sighed and shook her head. If she hadn’t smiled, he would have insisted that they stay another few days, regardless of his wishes.

“No.” She refused his offer. “No, it wouldn’t be fair to you. This entire trip is something I thought up, and you’ve done so much for me. Are  _ still _ doing so much for me. You only asked one thing; you wanted to visit your friends in the RRD before we kept going. And we need to go there anyways, if I’m to try out this quarterstave you mentioned to see if it’s a better fit for me than a sword.”

“I suppose.” The Knight hedged. “If you’re all right mixing business with pleasure.”

Bezel laughed softly at the joke, and the way she tipped her head back, the way the sun caught in her hair and made her eyes glow took his breath away.

“Who am I to deny my Knight anything?” She said teasingly. 

The Knight found he couldn’t speak and swallowed to try and make the lump in his throat go down. 

He was truly lost in her presence.

 

***

 

_ Portstand Rapid Response Division Encampment _

_ Dalum Province, Aroca _

_ The Below _

_ 10 Days Later _

  
  


It occurred to The Knight about ten seconds after their small skyskiff settled down on the outskirts of Portstand’s perimeter to avoid being shot down by incineration blasts that this would be the second time that the RRD operations base had hosted royalty with absolutely no prior warning. He wanted to feel guilty about it, but really, there hadn’t been a good means of sending word ahead. Only a few mages had the talent of far-messaging, and they were all decidedly relegated to critical Atlantean operations. 

Besides, he was too busy being excited at catching up with Sloane and the few others he was on speaking terms with before his reassignment to linger on fears for too long. And Bezel was fairly glowing as well.

A guard continent marched out to meet them accompanied by Sloane, and the older Knight Commander paused at twenty paces out before he groaned a little and took a knee, the rest following suit.

“Your royal highness.” Sloane declared, polite and formal as decorum commanded when the princess of the royal family appeared unannounced. “We were not informed of your arrival.”

“You didn’t know that the princess of Atlantis was making a tour of The Below?” Bezel asked, wearing the simplest outfit that was still of royal make and fitting. Her emerald eyes sparkled with mirth as she watched Sloane genuflect, then let them swivel over to her Knight. The Knight merely raised an eyebrow, wondering if this was an act she intended to drop, or if she intended to keep up appearances. He could live with either, though he dearly wished that she didn’t feel the need to act like the Princess all the time. 

“We knew that you were making a tour, yes.” Sloane answered her. “I was not aware that you would be visiting military installations as a part of it.”

“Well, you were here. And my Knight evinced an interest in visiting his former posting.” Bezel said airily. When Sloane didn’t speak and kept his head bowed, Bezel sighed and looked to the Knight again. He blinked and then made a gesture of ‘get on with it’ towards her, and the princess fell into an easy smile.

“Please, Knight Commander.” Bezel implored the commanding officer of the 242nd. “Rise. I get enough of that at home. I no longer have a chaperone who expects such worthless gestures.”

Sloane’s head jerked up in surprise, and Bezel smiled at him. “This is an  _ informal _ visit, Knight Commander. As a personal request, could we  _ please _ do away with royal decorum? At least for a day or two?”

Sloane slowly stood up, gesturing for the others to do so. The old soldier kept looking between Princess Bezel and the Knight, and the young man didn’t quite know what to make of the mixture of curiosity and  _ What Have You Done Now _ that Sloane seemed to wear. 

“If you wish.” Sloane finally conceded. “So, an informal visit.”

Bezel nodded. “I didn’t come here for a parade review. I was being perfectly serious. We’ve been exploring Northern Aroca for some time now, and I wanted to do something nice for my Knight. He wanted to visit Portstand. May we stay for a few days?”

“Of course.” Sloane immediately allowed the request. “We would be happy to house and shelter the royal princess, and her…” Sloane paused as he stared at the Knight, and then he cut himself off and sighed. “Boy, you’ve been letting yourself go. That haircut is  _ not _ regulation. When’s the last time you had it cut?”

The Knight ran a gloved hand up across his scalp, and did find his dark hair a little thicker than usual. 

“I rather like it that way.” Bezel harrumphed, folding her arms. “Honestly, I thought Sloane was your  _ friend _ , my Knight.”

The sheer lunacy of the conversation made one of the knights in the ranks let out a nervous giggle, which they stifled for all of two seconds before Bezel broke out into a laugh herself, and then everyone else followed, save for the Knight and Sloane, who settled for amused smiles.

“All right, all right.” Sloane waved off the pack of mage knights. “Back to your posts, I’ll see to the princess and her escort.” The band dispersed, and Sloane came up to the two of them and quickly clasped the Knight’s forearm in his hand. “You look good, boy. You’ve been taking care of yourself, I hear. It was all the news down here, you wiping the floor with that uppity Royal Knight in that duel of yours.”

“I was merely exercising my duties in protecting the princess from harm.” The Knight answered stiffly.

“I’ll bet.” Sloane said dryly, and his eyes narrowed in a gaze which meant that he and the Knight would be having words later. “So. Came for a visit, eh? Got tired of living the easy life on Atlantis and decided to come play with the real Mage Knights, did you?”

“Actually, I was hoping that the princess and I might borrow one of your training halls.” The Knight explained. “The Princess wanted some additional practice in her self-defense.”

“Mm-hm.” Sloane squinted at them again, then rolled his shoulders and passed them to get to their skiff. “Come on. Let’s get you two inside the base and see about finding you some rooms. We have the guest quarters available for you, your highness. And your Knight Protector can…”

“My Knight will stay with me.” Bezel cut the old man off, unfazed as his head whipped back around in astonishment. “I’m certain you have an adjoining room he can use. Should anything happen, it would be better to keep him close.”

“Hmm.” Sloane grunted and climbed into the skiff, clearly having something else on his mind, but keeping it to himself for the time being. “We’ve got some decent food on hand, but it’s not up to royal standards.”

Bezel and the Knight followed Sloane into the skyskiff and sat down as he powered it up.

“Whatever you have for your men will be more than adequate for us.” Bezel reassured the base commander, and grinned playfully at the Knight after. “I’m certain your cooks do a better job at preparing a meal than my Knight does out in the wilderness.”

Sloane sputtered and immediately demanded to know just what the Knight had been feeding the poor girl, and the Knight found he couldn’t speak over the blush on his face. Bezel’s laughter kept the mood light and the silence filled for him, at least.

 

***

 

The rest of the Mage Knights in the 242nd Division watched Princess Bezel at a distance as the girl, having changed out for some simpler clothing and  _ actual leggings _ made her way from one side of the camp to the other constantly staring at a strange device in her hand with a squinted up look of concentration. Even had they not known it was her just by dint of keeping tabs on  _ royalty on the premises _ , she would have been easy to pick out by the brilliant fire of her red hair.

The Knight sat on the balcony of Portstand’s main building, trying  _ not _ to just stare at her as she glided about without a care in the world. His stare would have betrayed him in an instant, not that the alternative, of sitting here and looking at Knight Commander Alastair Sloane was any better. The old man had poured them each a drink of slightly alcoholic fruit juice five minutes ago, and hadn’t stopped  _ staring at him _ since. He hadn’t said a word, dressed in his fatigues and the thinnest layer of armor possible. His hair had, if the Knight had to wager, gone a little more pepper-gray, the black fading out even more.

“So,” Sloane said, having waited until the Knight brought the cup to his lips to take another drink to break up the motionless faceoff, “have you kissed her yet?”

The Knight immediately choked on his drink, and leaned forward so he didn’t spray it all over his shirt. “What?!” He gasped, once the danger of asphyxiation had passed. Sloane just stared at him even harder for a moment and then relaxed, leaning back in his chair.

“Boy, I could tell how you felt about her the moment you touched down on the base.” The old Knight Commander sighed. “I wasn’t expecting her to look at you the same way.”

“She doesn’t.” The Knight said hesitantly, and took another drink to brace himself. He made sure he swallowed it before Sloane could speak again, and raised a hand to keep him from trying, talking after. “She’s never said anything to me. We’re friends. Nothing more.”

“Friends.” Sloane said flatly, setting his glass down and looking out over the compound to where Bezel was now shaking her head as she tapped the side of her gadget against the side of a wagon. “What is she  _ doing _ anyways?”

“Mapping leylines.” The Knight said. “It’s a...project of hers. She’s trying to see how magic flows over all of Terra.”

“Why?”

The Knight shrugged. So much of what she did was beyond him. Her skill in Artifice was leagues beyond anything anyone else in the world was attempting. “Something about collecting mana more efficiently.”

Sloane blinked. “When I need mana, I take it. The world’s full of it.”

“Some people take more than they need, she said. Others don’t take enough.” The Knight pointed out, marveling that he could remember even that much of the strange technical jargon she’d thrown at him back on Atlantis. “She’s trying to make a device to fix that.”

“Hm.” Sloane murmured. “So, this grand tour of The Below…”

“Sort of a cover story.” The Knight nodded, smiling a little. He glanced at Bezel for about two seconds, then let his eyes slide back to Sloane. “Of course, I’d appreciate if you didn’t tell anyone that.”

Sloane sighed again and scratched at his scalp. “Fair enough. I doubt the Mage King would have let her wander Below just for an experiment. Have you been visiting the territories?”

“Some.” The Knight conceded. “We’ll be visiting more. She wanted to come here, though.”

“No.  _ You _ wanted to come here, and she allowed it.” Sloane corrected him. “Neither of her brothers or her father would have granted a boon to anyone working under them like this.”

The Knight sat, blinking at that realization. “But she...She needs to train, and this was the best place to…”

“Excuses. A justification.” Sloane dismissed his protest, picking his glass back up and taking another long drink. When he set it down, the hard look in his eyes was back. “What. Did you. Do.”

The now wide-eyed Knight threw up his hands. “I don’t know!” 

“You saved her life, boy.” Sloane pointed out with a growl. “A girl remembers something like that. And then after three years of not seeing you, she turns around and shows up after you’ve just survived a Code Violet incident and snaps you up to be her personal guardian. Again, something that raised a flag in my mind. Sure, she justified it by saying she wanted the best...But if that was all, I’d have never seen you again. Instead, I get to hear that sometime later, after you’ve been in her service for a while, you take it upon yourself to  _ train her _ to fight in a way that no other royal instructor or tutor would have ever allowed, much less thought of. The divine right of power, the key to the royal family’s right of rulership, and she turns it on its head by not casting an Incineration Wave, but a...a…”

“Repulsion Blast.” The Knight filled in the name for him. 

Sloane growled again, and jerked up to his feet. He spun away from the Knight and used the space and the time to get himself back under control.

“She made you her  _ combat instructor.” _ Sloane breathed in a loud, slow breath and turned back to face him. “And that’s just what I know. She’s  _ different _ than anyone else, boy. She’s changed from what I expected from a member of the royal family.”

The Knight rankled at the insinuation. “Maybe she’s always been different, she’s just never felt like she could show it!” 

 

Sloane stared at him again, and fell back into his chair with a disbelieving laugh. “Crazy. Absolutely crazy.” He drew a hand across his face, and looked ten years older afterwards. “You didn’t listen to me.”

“When?” The Knight asked, genuinely confused.

Sloane closed his eyes. “When I first visited you in the hospital, after you saved her life? I told you not to get any ideas about her.”

“I became a Knight for her.” The Knight declared firmly, jumping up to his feet and staring down at Sloane defiantly.

“To protect her.”

“Yes!”

“Because you love her.” Sloane accused him.

The wind got sucked out of his sails, and the Knight slumped back into his chair. “Yes.” He croaked out, and crumpled when he saw the pain that confession caused in his mentor.

“You really are too much like me for your own good.” Sloane muttered, and poured himself another glass. “Why is she different? Just having you around can’t be enough. What have you been teaching her? What have you been showing her?”

“I…” The Knight started out, and then sputtered to a halt. He remembered it all. The trips to the shelter on Atlantis. The history lessons about Atlantis and the royal family and the Mage Knights that Bezel knew, but everyone else had forgotten.

The locket around his neck that carried his mother’s image suspended in magical light, and her guiding words to the both of them, the children she had died to keep alive. He took his glass in his hand and drank the rest in one long draught.

“The things she needs to know to be a better princess.” He finally said. 

“She’ll never rule Atlantis, you know.” Sloane pointed out, because the line of succession was  _ very _ clear on that point. Both of her brothers stood in line before her. 

The Knight shrugged and pushed his now empty glass across the small table towards Sloane. “She’ll never rule. But she can  _ guide _ the world.” 

“Mind your bearing.” Sloane warned him softly as he refilled the cup. “She is a princess of the blood, and you are…”

“I know what I am.” The Knight interrupted him, taking the glass back and turning to look at Bezel down below, a hundred paces off. Maybe it was just timing, or maybe she sensed him, because she looked up in that moment and grinned at him, full of life and joy.

He broke his gaze away from her when it became too painful to keep wearing the smile, and drowned his sorrow in a long swallow. “I am her Knight, and she trusts me with her life.”

“And that’s all that the world will ever let you be.” Sloane reminded him, no real hint of censure left in his voice, and only the sadness of someone who saw the pain waiting for a friend and could do nothing to stop it. “You’re older than she is. You have to be the voice of reason for the both of you.”

“I’m just a friend to her. She doesn’t think of me like that.”

“Yes, she does.” Sloane disagreed.

And they both took another drink.

 

***

 

_ Portstand RRD Encampment _

_ 2 Days Later _

  
  


The quarterstave, the Knight decided after a couple of days worth of sparring, was definitely  _ not _ his weapon of choice. Bezel on the other hand, seemed to be made for it. 

The sword had a point and an edge and the flat and the crossguard. It could stab and slash, and with the right spellwork, be used to channel or deflect certain direct magical attacks. It required poise and finesse and focus, but there was basically a pointy end and a not pointy end one held onto, and that was enough.

The quarterstave Bezel took to like a waterfowl on a pond had no such limitations or simplicity. It could be held  _ anywhere _ along its length, and though it was made of wood, Bezel’s natural talent with materials had her hardening it with spell infusions until it took on the punishing qualities of a steel rod of equal size, without any of the added weight. She was still rough and unpolished with it, but her analytic mind had picked up early on that there were  _ two _ striking ends she could use, and every blow he blocked was followed up by another that swung around from the other end as she kept him at arm’s reach. The few times he tried to close in she either lashed out with a foot, or once, with a smarting pain in his nose still an hour after it happened, by slamming the middle section of the staff straight into his face.

They were both breathing hard and sweating as he stumbled back from her next defensive smashes and held up a hand for a pause. “Enough.” The Knight wheezed, and set his wooden training sword down on the floor of the hall. “Land’s sake, Bezel. Where are you getting all this aggression from?”

“I keep thinking about all the insults my brother Jorran likes to throw at me about how I’ll never be anything more than a useless girl.” She answered, her chest heaving for air. “It gets me angry enough to put up a good fight.”

The Knight nodded to that and fetched them both bottles of water, and nearly choked on his when the very first thing Bezel did with hers was to pour some of it over her scalp and let it trickle down her neck and soak into the tight covering beneath the thin training armor. Watching those small rivulets of water join with the perspiration just above her breasts was…

He closed his eyes and turned around, all too aware that the pounding of his heart wasn’t all due to the workout. Even with his eyes closed, his mind filled in the gaps of longing with a fleeting memory he had tried, tried and failed, to bury; 

The day that the King had allowed her to leave for the Below and make a proper touring of their holdings, she had kissed him on impulse in her joy and excitement. That brief moment had seared itself in his mind, and it appeared, as always, right when he could least afford it.

_ She’s the princess, she’s the princess, she’s thirteen…. _

And none of that mattered, none of it remained when Bezel smiled at him or laughed. It was torture, and he found himself aching from it. 

He found himself unwilling to drive it, or her, from his mind. “If you keep practicing,” He started, and coughed when his voice spun into a high, squeakier octave, “erm, sorry, if you keep practicing, you’re going to be very good with that.”

“It feels natural. But...I don’t know, I’m probably overthinking it.” Bezel admitted, finally taking a drink and exhaling loudly as she reached for a towel. 

“That’s why we practice.” The Knight said reassuringly, finally turning to face her properly as she wiped herself down and thankfully (Or not) covered herself up with her towel. “You practice until you become good with a weapon and its maneuvers. And then you practice until you can do it while you’re distracted. And then, until you can do it without thinking about it at all.” His eyes darkened as he thought back to Lieutenant Baynes and Zolim all over again, and that last desperate fight with The Liar that had pushed him to the ragged edge of his limits. 

Bezel sighed. “Three years?” She asked him, and the Knight nodded. “I’m not a very good student, you know. It may take you longer to get me that good.”

“Who said you weren’t a good student?” The Knight demanded. When she hesitated, he guessed. “That Royal Knight I drove into the ground in our duel?” Bezel ducked her head and nodded, and the Knight growled. “He was a fool. You are a  _ wonderful _ student. You always have been.”

She blushed at the praise and looked up at him with shy green eyes. “Maybe it’s just that you’re a good teacher.” She offered. 

The Knight blinked and swallowed, then mustered a small laugh. “Perhaps we can compromise and say that it’s both, your highness?”

There was a laugh buried in her smile. She nodded and removed her helmet, and the hair she’d carefully put up underneath it came undone and rolled out behind her head, coming to rest between her shoulders. The Knight stopped breathing, and just stared at Bezel as she glowed, messy and flushed and perfect.

He welcomed the distraction that came with a loud and particularly jarring knock at the doorframe, and spun around to face the source. It was another staff officer on the base, who was holding a formerly folded up missive with wide eyes.

“Your highness,” the middle-aged man began politely, “we just received a dispatch from Atlantis reminding us about your upcoming 14th birthday. Is it true?”

The knight blinked and thought; he had forgotten about it, but her birthday was coming up. In the past it had meant an extra sweetmeat at the Academy and a small ceremony wishing her good health and continued longevity, the same as for every child of the royal house. The Mage King’s birthday was a much more elaborate affair.

Bezel exhaled. “Yes, it is. But you don’t have to do anything special for it, it’s just…”

“Oh, no, your highness! That simply wouldn’t be proper!” The base officer protested. “So long as you are in residence here, it is only appropriate that we plan a more lavish affair! You are the princess of Atlantis, after all. I will make the arrangements with supply so we can give you a proper feast!” And he took off like a shot before she could try and talk him out of it.

Bezel went over to the wall and slid down against it with a soft groan, and the Knight joined her at her side a few seconds later.

“My birthday is a week away. I don’t suppose there’s any chance that we could get them to stop?” She asked him plaintively. 

“I doubt it, Princess Bezel.” The Knight said plainly. “Besides, these knights rarely have anything to celebrate. If it helps, think of this not as something they do for you. Think of it instead as an opportunity that you give them to make merry.”

Bezel tipped her head back, then rolled it over to side-eye him with amusement. “That does help.” She admitted. “But tell them no presents are required. The celebration is gift enough.”

“I will pass the word along, your highness.” He said, smiling. “So. You turn 14 this year.”

He expected the good mood to remain, but instead her smile disappeared.

“Yes.” She admitted. “I do. Old enough to be courted by the sons of nobility.”

He blinked rapidly at that, and only just managed to get out a single word in response. “Oh.” He hadn’t thought of that. That she was...that she might be…

Bezel huffed once and rolled her head back to neutral, staring across the room. “How old are you, my knight?”

“I turn 15 in a month.” He answered softly. She nodded once and stood up.

“I will remember that.” She said, offering him a hand to help him stand. 

His stomach twisting in knots, the Knight reached for her hand.

 

***

 

They could not be safer in Portstand, surrounded by over a hundred Mage Knights and easily twice that many support personnel who wished no harm on the Knight and certainly no harm against Princess Bezel Lantea. He was her assigned protector, and this should have been one of the times that he could actually relax a little from that job and not be so on edge.

But all of those feelings meant nothing in the realm of nightmares, where older fears and terrors didn’t pay attention to  _ should have beens. _ Flashes of The Liar, the callous laughter of the monster that hid in the flesh of Bezel and the voice of his mother, who whispered such horrible things and tried to break him…

There was a hand on him and he snapped up gasping for air and snapping his hand out at the thing attacking him. A quick and sharp feminine cry that was more of a gasp made him come back to himself, and the Knight blinked and panted in the dark, his sweat-soaked shirt sticking to his body. His hand was still wrapped tightly around something, and…

And then he heard Bezel’s whimpers, and let go of her wrist. “I’m sorry.” He whispered, because he remembered where they were, and there was already the chance that someone else had heard him, or heard her scream, and would come running…

His eyes finally adjusted to the dim light, and he could make out the faint outline of her nightgown, a soft opaque lavender-colored satin with pearl white sleeves and a hem that went down to just above her ankles. She cradled her wrist to her chest and watched him with her emerald-colored eyes that glinted slightly in the moonlight that came in through the room’s blinds.

“I had to check on you.” She said, in a voice only a shade below normal speaking volume. “You were...you were having another nightmare.” 

The Knight blinked at that. Another? She must have seen the confusion in his eyes because she shook her head. “You had them every third or fourth night out in the wilderness. There...there was nobody else around then, and I didn’t know what I...If I could even…”

“I’m all right, Bezel.” The Knight quickly tried to reassure her. They were his demons, his fears, it wasn’t her responsibility to deal with them.

“You are  _ not _ all right.” She snapped at him, and he froze when he heard the grief in her voice. “I’ve had to wake up listening to you crying out and shouting in your sleep for too many nights now for you to lie to me and tell me that you’re not hurting!”

He hissed and pressed a hand to his head. “Quiet, you’ll bring everyone else on the base running!” The Knight warned her in a harsh whisper.

Bezel sniffed. “No, they won’t.” She held up a small stone engraved with a rune that pulsed gently with blue light. “Sound dampening bubble. Nobody outside of the effect can hear us.”

His breathing finally under control, the Knight stared at the rock, then to her. “I...thank you. For your discretion.” He wasn’t breathing hard, but his mind was still running a mile a minute. “I will get a handle on this, Bezel. It’s nothing. You don’t have to worry about it.”

He had meant to be reassuring, but that was apparently the worst possible thing he could say. Her face crumpled, and she shoved his shoulder with one hand, knocking him back against the headboard, and she got up onto the bed, dropping the stone on the comforter between them as she grabbed his shoulders and shook him.

“Stop it! Just stop lying! Stop lying to me, just…” She snapped, and her voice cracked and broke, and she slumped forward, burying her face against his breastbone. His arms folded around her and held her tight as she shook and wept silently.

“I’m sorry.” He repeated, and hated how hollow it sounded. He said it again and again anyways, every time she let out a whimper that cut through the trembling. He held her and felt her tears stain his tunic that was already sweated through, and hated himself for doing this to her.

“You are my Knight.” She finally said, some quiet minutes later. “I trust you with my life.” She pulled herself out of his arms and leaned back, kneeling with her bent legs on either side of his lap to stare him in the eyes. “Why don’t you trust me with yours?”

He felt fresh shame rise to the surface, and shut his eyes. He was hurting her, keeping all of this bottled up. They had traveled to Zolim first, because…

_ Because she wanted to understand him. Because she’d wanted to help him. _

“The Liar.” He forced the name out, and kept his eyes open so he wouldn’t see the image of that abomination covered in horrible mouths and eyes. “It...Once we were cut off from all of our reinforcements inside the mists, the only option we had left was to try and get to the center, destroy the source of it. It got to everyone, somehow saw inside of our heads, picked apart the things that would hurt us the worst. Another squire gouged her eyes out to keep it from looking at it. The lucky ones were dead before we ever got to it. Somehow, it had trouble looking into my mind, or maybe it just went after the others first for its own pleasure. There was another squire, first in our graduating class...The one who gave that speech at our graduation. Whins. The thing’s voices got to him. Convinced him that he needed to kill everyone. He slaughtered innocents in cold blood, the very people our oaths charged us to protect. I was forced to kill him. In the end, having his sword saved my life in single combat against The Liar. It used the voices of those we were close to, the faces of those we trusted.”

He met her worried stare, then looked down to the still pulsing stone between them. “It wore your face. It used your voice. It used my mother’s voice.”

“Whatever it said, whatever it told you, it wasn’t true.” Bezel insisted, pressing her hand to his chest. “I promise you. It  _ wasn’t true. _ It isn’t coming back. You cast the Geas and then slew it. You’ll never see it again.”

The Knight let out a single, sick laugh. “It said I would.”

“It lies.” Bezel cut in grimly. “It always lies. I read up on it in the archives. It delights in suffering and pain and death, and it especially loves to torment the minds of its victims.”

“I know.” He answered her wearily. “I know it does. I know all of that, but…”

But he still saw it in his nightmares, remembered that dark version of his Bezel sitting on a throne of corpse bones, taunting him with all of his worst fears. 

He remembered it, and she saw it in his eyes.

“Please.” She begged him. “Tell me what I can do to help you. Don’t face this again alone, because you aren’t. Let me help you.”

The Knight shook his head. “I don’t know. I...I’m just so  _ tired. _ ” He always was tired, the day after one of these nightmares. Fits and sudden starts, hours spent trying to forget and to go back to sleep, and then waking up early as he always did, like his body was accustomed to regardless of the quality of his rest. 

Bezel finally climbed off of his bed and picked up the stone. She pressed it into his hand. 

“What’s this for?” He asked.

“A reminder.” Bezel told him gently. “That you are not alone. That you’re never alone.”

_ That I Am With You _ was the unspoken intent that glimmered in her eyes, and in the light reflected off of them.

“I can’t take this. This is yours.” He protested, but she wrapped his fingers around it before he could pass it back to her. 

“Then I’ll make you a lightstone of your own tomorrow.” She calmed him. “For tonight, though, I want you to hold onto this. Please. For my sake. Let me be your strength in the dark.”

“You are.” He found himself saying to her. He was surprised he’d said it, because it was true, and it was one of the things that, were he more put together, more awake, less panicked, he would have never said to her. Should never have said to her.

That tiny piece of unexpected honesty, though, made her face light up and glow.

“Can I get you anything?” She asked him.

“No.” He shook his head. “Just...could you sit with me for a while? Until I...Until I get sleepy again?”

Bezel huffed a soft laugh and nodded, then went and got the chair from his room’s desk and plunked it down beside his bed. At her nod, he forced himself back under the covers and sat the glowing charm on the stand next to them, focusing on that soft blue light that pulsed like a heartbeat. 

“How did you make this?” He asked, partly because he was curious, but mostly so she would have something to talk about in her technical jargon. It usually went over his head, and he was hoping it would have an anesthetic effect. Eager, she dove into her explanation, somehow sensing that he might want a more technical blow-by-blow of resonance channels, leyline affinity, power reservoir, mana circuiting and mana capacitance.

He went from hurtfully awake to drowsy, and then to flickering awareness, and then finally, fell asleep with his eyelids closing against the reassuring sight of her runestone on the bedside table, and her soft, melodic voice nattering away in his ears.

He didn’t dream of The Liar again that night, or on the next night either. Her replacement lightstone, dutifully charged before she bid him a good night, helped to put him to sleep.

 

***

 

_ Portstand RRD Encampment _

_ Princess Bezel’s 14th Birthday _

  
  


Despite what she had hoped for, the celebration held by the Portstand division turned out to be rather posh. The kitchen staff had clearly put in a lot of work, and while nowhere near as elaborate or expensive as some of the dishes made by the royal kitchens, it was clear to the Knight that they had definitely put some money into this. He wore the dress uniform of the RRD with his old rank insignia and felt right at home in it. He could have worn the one crafted for him after he’d received his transfer to the Royal Knights, but it didn’t mean nearly as much to him. The princess had conceded to the formality of her role, and wore the simplest royal gown that she had carted along with them, a fine dress of purple and blue colored silk with the royal family’s emblem embroidered along the front of the skirt.

He paced behind Bezel as the princess made her way through the serving line, motioning to various dishes and asking questions about their ingredients and the cooking process. For the local Arocans who worked on the base, it had been a chance for them to show off their traditional dishes. There were a few Atlantean delicacies, but Bezel had only taken token servings of those, little more than a bite each, before zeroing in on the dishes of rice and eggs and seasoned meat and local fruit and vegetables cooked in every conceivable variety, and more than a few of them with a fair amount of heat and spice.

She accepted a small skewer with a fried bit of goat in a blistering red sauce and tried it out, immediately widening her eyes as the fire of the peppers used in it hit her tongue. The Arocan servers panicked and quickly scrambled to offer her a glass of milk, but Bezel waved off their concern even as she drained it quickly to put out the fire.

“I’m all right.” She reassured them after, still gasping and with a beat of sweat on her brow. She smiled and laughed a little. “I think we could stand to have a little more spice in the dishes on Atlantis. Um...How to say this again?  _ It was good very.”  _ She intoned in stilted and slightly incorrect Arocan.

It might have been wrong to their ears, but the dark-skinned Arocans brightened up visibly at the praise, and at the princess even bothering to try and speak their tongue. “You speak Arocan, your highness?” One of the cooks asked eagerly.

Bezel shook her head. “No, not well. But I am learning. My Knight apparently had some lessons before he entered my service, and he has tried his best to teach me.” She leaned forward a bit and beamed at the man. “Although I would dearly love to try and learn some more. If you have any time free tomorrow, perhaps?”

“Just tell us when, your highness.” The man quickly agreed to it. Bezel’s smile broadened, and she took her tray full of dishes up in her arms as she looked back at the line, and blushed. 

“My apologies for taking so long, everyone. You really did go all out, and I thank you for it. But this party is more for you than it is for me. My desire is that you all find a measure of happiness, and that you know you have my gratitude for everything you do to keep our people safe and protected. Now, I’m going to go sit down and let you all try some of this wonderful food, the cooks really have outdone themselves!  _ May the blessings of sky with you be!” _

The Knight chuckled at the second attempt at Arocan, which made the locals cheer. He took his own plate and followed Bezel to the table of honor while the rest of the division quickly descended on the buffet like ravenous beasts.

“Very diplomatic of you, your highness.” Knight Commander Sloane said, seated next to the princess off of her left shoulder, the knight on her left. Bezel went rigid and slowly turned to look at Sloane, while the Knight watched them both in his peripheral vision.

“Diplomacy has nothing to do with good manners and giving thanks to ones’ hosts.” Bezel pointed out curtly. “And while this base may be run by you, Knight Commander, the Arocans who call this land home were the ones who were tasked with preparing the meal. I owe them my thanks.”

“I see.” Sloane nodded. “Although I would caution you to be more careful going forward. Here on the base we are able to control things, but elsewhere, there would be a higher risk of someone trying to poison your food.”

Bezel sighed. “What reason would they have to harm me?” She held up a hand when Sloane went to open his mouth. “Yes, Knight Commander,  _ I am aware _ that there is precedent. I was there.” She glanced past Sloane and locked eyes with the Knight. “We both were.” He didn’t breathe until she looked away again. “I am less interested in being afraid of such incidents as I am in trying to prevent them. Banali City, Zolim? There is a common theme. Something made those people angry enough, desperate enough, to do the unthinkable. I am sure that my father and my brothers and many others within the Mage Knights believe that suppression and brutal crackdowns are the answer.”

“You don’t?”

“Do you?” Bezel countered, lifting an eyebrow, and Sloane held his tongue.

She took another bite of sauteed vegetables mixed with fluffy seasoned rice and hummed appreciatively at the taste. “Perhaps if we spent more time getting to know the people of Terra instead of pushing them around, they might fear and hate us less. And we might be better protectors.”

“Rulers, you mean.” Sloane corrected her.

“Did I?” Bezel asked innocently, and let the conversation die.

 

Half an hour later as the meal wound down, a band of musicians made up of Mage Knights started to play music, and the tables were pushed out of the way to clear space in the outdoor pavilion for those who wished to dance. Many Knights of the 242nd stood up with their fellows and joined in festive line dancing, while others were braver and asked the hand of the few female Knights within the corps. And a few even asked for a dance with the princess herself, who smiled and refused each until Knight Commander Sloane forced the issue by standing up and invoking his right as host to claim the first dance with the guest of honor.

The Knight watched as Sloane, three heads taller than the young woman, guided her around the pavilion of polished river stone in leveled mortar. He’d felt on edge and a half-step from interfering when some of the other Knights in the corps had asked for a dance with her, but seeing her with Sloane, a man well old enough to be her father and who led her in a  _ ritsando _ where only their palms touched calmed him down a lot. Touching the amulet she’d crafted for him underneath his dress uniform and his undershirt did a lot more.

And then another member of the RRD, a young man only two years older than he was, sauntered up with a cup of alcohol, red in the face already from a few previously imbibed. “So, you decided to come back.” He drawled, grinning at the Knight. “You got bored of how quiet things were in the Royal Guard?”

The Knight recognized him; Haulison. He’d been on one of the teams on the Zolim mission that hadn’t gone into the mists that slaughtered everyone but himself. Pretty cocky, but he’d proven himself during the few operations that the Knight had been on with him before that. He was also an outspoken critic of the Royal Knights, no small part of which he’d likely gotten from Sloane and the other career officers. 

“My life has been many things, Haulison.” The Knight mused, feeling the weight of the amulet against his chest before letting his hand drop back down to the table. “Quiet has not been one of them.”

“So I hear.” Haulsion harrumphed. “Sloane was bragging up a storm about how you took down that pantywaist Drake. They must be in a sad state if a flake like  _ you _ can defeat their best duelist.” The Knight blinked at the insult and re-evaluated the man, and was surprised to see no anger, only playful determination there.

The other knight was angling for a  _ duel _ and goading him on, he wasn’t saying it out of spite.

“Perhaps if time allows tomorrow, I might find the time to educate you on how woefully inadequate your standard training regimen is.” The Knight countered coolly, lifting his glass of pressed fruit juice. The other knight let out one barking laugh as they touched glasses, and nodded. 

“Make the time, little man. It’s bound to be more exciting than leading that spoiled brat of a princess through basic form exercises.”

The Knight felt a flare of anger at that, but tamped it down. What did anyone know of Bezel’s heart, or her courage? Did anyone else know her well enough to see the blazing beacon of warmth and compassion wrapped in iron determination? The Queen hidden away behind the shroud of a princess that only acted as expected when there were eyes on her?

“She is stronger than you might think.” The Knight settled on the quietest defense of her character that he could think of, and hoped that Haulison wouldn’t see right through him. Even though the other man was likely well on his way to drunk, he didn’t dare risk it.

“Pft. She’s just like all the other royals.” Haulison muttered darkly. “Thinking that they’re better than us. She couldn’t even be bothered to have a dance with a single knight aside from Sloane, and even that was just because of protocol.”

The Knight watched Sloane and Bezel continue to dance to the slow-tempo song that the band was playing, twirling around one another and making scant and meaningless conversation as they kept their point of contact limited to only a single hand. He’d missed it at first, distracted by Haulison and the pendant with his mother’s precious image and words, but now he could see that on almost every second or third turn as Bezel’s face swiveled past the table he was still seated at, her eyes were instinctively locking onto his face.

Like she was looking for something. Or waiting for something.

He dared to dream that she was waiting for him. He refused to give the thought space to breathe.

 

She was just fourteen, he was less than a month away from his 15th birthday. She was a princess and he was just a Mage Knight and her protector and they were surrounded by an entire base full of soldiers who loved to gossip. It was nothing but a disaster waiting to happen. He could be censured. The hint of impropriety might see him stripped of his rank, thrown in irons and result in the princess being disgraced.

But she kept looking at him as the dance went on, and another thought, one that the Knight’s pounding heart refused to let his mind wash away, crept in.

That maybe she hadn’t refused the other knights a dance because she thought it improper by social custom because of her station...but because she wanted one with him.

And here was Haulison, besmirching her good name because he thought her a prudish and uppity princess who refused to socialize with commoners. Haulison, who had no idea of the persona of Ella that Bezel took on when she went with the Knight to volunteer at the Geenes’ shelter. Haulison, who did not know how she had wept to find her people suffering at the heart of Atlantis, which should have been a land of plenty. 

The Knight found himself standing up from the table, moving in opposition to every bit of screaming common sense in his mind. His heart had taken control of his faculties.

“Perhaps we should test that.” The Knight heard himself say, and didn’t bother to wait for an answer from the inebriated Mage Knight. He walked onto the pavilion and moved straight for Bezel and Sloane, who saw him coming and stopped their dance when they were five paces out.

“Is there something I can help you with?” Sloane asked the Knight carefully. 

The Knight shook his head. “Not you, sir.” And he looked to Bezel and held a hand out to her. “May I have this dance, milady?”

He knew all of her smiles, and like the dawning of the sun, the rarest and most precious of them, an honest grin full of happiness and  _ yesyesyes _ blossomed as she pulled her hand away from Sloane’s still extended palm and rested it in the Knight’s. 

“Who am I to deny my Knight anything?” She answered cheerfully, and the Knight  _ heard _ Sloane’s eyebrows snap up. 

He had taken many classes, including one on dance, and there had only been one day dedicated to ‘regional uncivilized dances’. The band, finishing up the  _ ritsando _ moved instead to an uptempo melody that the Knight recognized as Arocan in origin. A local dance, not a formal one that one would see in the royal courts.

This was a dance of the people of the land, and he guided Bezel’s arm out to the side while his other hand came to rest in the small of her back, pulling her in close to him in a gentle motion that still had her gasping slightly, and left her face flushed.

“Oh my.” She got out in a shaky voice as they took to the dance, losing themselves in the song and the rhythm and each other’s eyes. “Where did you learn to dance like this?” She asked, staring into his storm-gray and blue eyes. 

The Knight shrugged and smiled and continued the dance, realizing only near the end that every other couple on the dance pavilion had stepped off and given them the whole of the space to move around in freely. It made him blush only a little less than she was, but when they stopped at the song’s conclusion, both of their faces were burning when the applause came.

In the noise and the thundering of his heart, the Knight found the courage to dare one more blasphemy. He took her hand and brought it up to his lips, and then looking down her arm to capture her emerald eyes in his stare, branded a feather-light kiss on the back of her fingers.

“Happy fourteenth birthday, Princess Bezel.” He congratulated her, ignoring how the applause became scattered as more than a few Knights on the grounds took to whispering and staring at him in shock.

In the moment, the Knight found he didn’t care.

 

***

 

_ 2 Days Later _

  
  


Two days later, in the dead of night, birds took to the skies in angry flocks and every milking and slaughter-bound animal in the vicinity suddenly went mad with agitated noise. The Knight wondered at it, but dismissed it because of his need for sleep and quickly nodded back off. He wasn’t sure how much later afterwards it was, but then the ground took to shaking wildly, and the entire building rattled and trembled around them, bits of the ceiling crumbling down on his bed and his head as he fumbled in the dark until he got off a light spell, tinted green with the glow of his mana. 

“Bezel!” He shouted, lunging out of bed and gasping as he tripped and fell. He saw an entire piece of the ceiling give way and fall towards him, and he shoved a hand forward and incinerated it completely with a wild blast of flaring fury, called up on instinct. He took a moment to breathe and focus, then dashed into her room and found her whimpering, huddled up tight beneath a shield spell of blue mana while another piece of ceiling leaned against it and pressed her into her bed. He snarled and ripped it away with his bare hands, shouting her name twice more until she realized she was free and safe and let the shield spell drop, lunging for his arms. The shaking finally came to a stop, and there was about two seconds of dead silence before shouting and yelling from everywhere in the camp began.

“What...what  _ was _ that?” Bezel stammered.

The Knight held her tightly, feeling a thundering against his ribs and wondered if it was his heart beating away or hers. He knew what this was, indirectly, from stories that had been told to him by other Mage Knights who had spent significant time deployed in The Below. 

An earth-shake. 

 

“The earth moved.”

“I...I thought that was just something people liked to say as a joke.”

“No.” The Knight shook his head. “Earth-shakes are very real. And very dangerous.” The danger passed, he finally realized their state of undress and let her go. “Get some clothes on. Grab everything you can. We need to get out of this building.”

Less than three minutes later, they stood outside, grabbed halfway in their dash out of the main Portstand building by several guards and escorted to safety. The Knight had barely had time to strap on his sword, and wore no armor in the blitz of movement. Everyone who had been so relaxed and cheerful two nights prior during the princess’s birthday was now somber-faced, and more than a few were being tended to by medics, with bandages being applied and the faint glow of countless yellow and green auras blazing away into healing spells. Everyone had made a blitz for the outside, and while a few of the structures in Portstand were looking a little worse for wear under the blazing light of two dozen magical sky-fire flare spells, it was clear that nobody had been trapped in a collapsed building. In the midst of the chaos, Knight Commander Sloane bellowed out orders and conferred with the other ranked officers who were presenting status reports and carrying out his commands.

The Knight found himself trailing behind Bezel, who had shaken off her shocked state and was now fully awake, dressed in a simple outfit devoid of any royal markings, and wearing a thick red shawl that one of the Arocan base staff had given to her as a birthday present. The Knight shivered, remembering too late how chilly Arocan nights could be without the sun beating down on him. 

“Knight Commander!” She called out, her resonant female voice just starting to turn and deepen from its girlish origins. Sloane paused and turned as she approached, glancing once to the Knight who flinched under that accusing stare of falling behind his charge. “Was anyone badly hurt?”

“No fatalities, your highness.” Sloane told her, professional and gruff. “But we weren’t as close to where this earth-shake started. We’ve got some lumps and bruises and more than a couple of concussions, but the rest of the unit stands ready.”

“Ready for what?” The Knight latched on to Sloane’s words, and his danger sense was ringing. He knew his former Commander well enough to hear the undertone within it...there was a mission.

“We just received orders from RRD Central Command.” Sloane explained curtly. “They have pinpointed the earth-shake to the eastern quarter of Aroca along a known fissure. It is close to a refinement plant that processes mana crystals for weaponry and armor used by the Mage Knights. It has suffered damage and they wish us to…”

“Sir! Commander Sloane!” An out of breath knight raced up, paper in hand. “A message on the emergency spell-band!” The Knight looked closer and spotted the familiar band around his forearm that marked him as one of the rare and specially trained far-messaging mages within the corps; the vital link in communications to their outposts around the world. “The settlement of Dapana has suffered catastrophic damage, and the automatic distress Sending triggered!”

The Knight flinched, already bringing up what he knew of Dapana from his memory. Over 10,000 people called it home. It was close to the great fissure that ran across eastern Aroca, next to a wide lake. It wasn’t important enough for a member of the nobility to call it home, didn’t qualify as a separate district, and more or less kept to itself. It exported nothing of value to Atlantis in terms of wealth or manufacture, but was home to many farmers and regional merchants. It had never called for help before, routinely protested Atlantean oversight, and wasn’t important to the RRD, or logistics, or anyone. It was, in a word, one of the few major Arocan settlements that Atlantis didn’t have a foothold in, and had gone ignored only by dint of its inconsequential status.

His heart fell when he pieced it all together and realized exactly what the official response would be. And when Bezel found out…

“Dapana.” Sloane sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Has the message been heard by other RRD Divisions?”

“Uh, I...I believe so, sir.” 

“Has Command issued any orders for anyone to go to it?” Sloane pressed on. The far-sending knight closed his eyes and chanted for a bit as he aligned himself to the invisible whispers of message spells flittering this way and that across the world, then came back out after fifteen seconds. “No, sir. No orders to render assistance to Dapana have been issued.”

Sloane’s eyes flickered over to Bezel, who let out a gasp of dismay at the news. “Something to say, your highness?”

“Are you telling me that  _ nobody _ in the whole of the Mage Knights is going to help the people of Dapana?!” Bezel demanded, her face pale in the scope of the disaster. “How many call it home?”

“Over 10,000.” The Knight said lowly, though not so quiet that Sloane didn’t hear him also and glower at him for cutting into the conversation.

“And you’re not going to save them?” Bezel demanded of Sloane, staring up at the man with graying hair who was so much taller than her, so much more capable, and while probably weaker than her in raw magic, was ten times more dangerous.

“We have been given our orders, your highness,” Sloane told her patiently, “and…”

“You have a duty to save those people!” Bezel snapped at him. “Wasn’t that the entire point of the Mage Knights, of Atlantis? To protect the people of Terra?”

Sloane stopped talking and blinked at her, curious and suddenly wary.

“Where did you hear that, your highness?” He asked, some quiet note in his voice that the Knight had never heard before. He found himself standing straighter, because something plucked his spine like a string.  _ Listen, _ it said.  _ Listen, for this is important. _

Bezel worried her lower lip. “My Knight told me when he was giving me instruction in self-defense. He said that the Mage Knights, that the royal family were  _ protectors _ before they ruled. Was this not so?”

Sloane’s eyes narrowed, focused on her with blazing intensity, and then all at once the pressure faded. “It was.” Sloane conceded. He looked over to the Knight, and the disapproval eased off. For Sloane, who was so hard so often, it was the closest thing to praise one usually got. 

“Then explain to me why all of the RRD, who are the first units summoned to defend Terra against the threats from beyond the sky and beyond the Veil, are going to let 10,000 of our people suffer and struggle and likely perish for...What was your mission again?  _ Weapons components?” _ Bezel spat the words out.

The Knight bit his tongue, but again, the voice of his mother sounded in his heart.

**Remember that** **_people_ ** **are more important than** **_things._ **

Sloane sighed, and this time, it was a sigh full of regret and fatigue. “We have been given our orders, your majesty, by RRD Command. Such orders cannot be ignored or dismissed, or  _ superseded _ by anything less than a royal decree.”

 

And there was the thrumming along the Knight’s spine again.  _ This is important. _

Anything less than a royal decree, Sloane had said. Someone else might have said it sarcastically, or meant that only the Mage King could retract or replace such an order. But this was Alastair Sloane, the man who had brought the Knight into the fold, and he was never anything less than brutally honest or gratingly polite. He was, above everything else,  _ precise _ in his words.

The Knight drew in a sharp breath as the subtle hint was laid bare before him, and both Sloane and the princess turned and looked to him. The Knight blinked several times, and stared at Bezel.

“Don’t get angry over the things you can’t change.” He said, repeating the most important lesson his mother had given him, and that he had passed on to Bezel. And then he inclined his head towards her.  _ I can’t say it directly. I cannot suggest this to you, you are royalty and I am just a Mage Knight and if Sloane hears me telling you what to do he can argue you are influenced. _

Bezel parsed out the words, staring at him in wonder in the early hours of the morning, and the Knight mouthed two syllables.  _ El-la. _

And she finally caught on.

“But what of the things I  _ can _ change?” She whispered, searching his face, and the Knight smiled at her. His brave, beautiful,  _ brilliant _ Bezel.

The princess whirled about on Sloane, standing tall and slipping on the mien practiced and perfected for years in the court of her father as a young girl.

“Knight Commander Alastair Sloane. I, Princess Bezel Lantea, royal born of Atlantis, issue a decree. You are to  _ ignore _ your issued orders from Command. The Princess hereby orders the 242nd Division to travel to Dapana and provide rescue and aid to the afflicted.”

Sloane blinked once, then took a knee and pressed a clenched fist to his chest. “As my princess commands.” He said gravely, standing back up and whistling so loud that every head in the yard turned to him and went silent. He channeled magic into his voice until it thundered into the night.  **_“Listen up you maggots! We’ve got new orders! I want EVERY Mage Knight geared up and ready for search and rescue in the fastest Skyskiffs we have! Support staff, clean out our shelves and warehouses, and load up every scrap of food, bit of cloth, and emergency medical stock that we’ve got. We’re emptying out Portstand, and we’re flying for Dapana! I want our lead units IN THE AIR in ten, and everyone else following quick as you can. Anyone who can speak Arocan, you’re heading up our lead units! MOVE, people!”_ **

Like scattering rats, everyone took off running, Portstand transforming into a sea of movement and intent and wild energy full of new purpose.

The Knight shook his head and marveled at it all. Did Bezel have any idea how truly incredible she was?

He felt her tug at his arm, and he looked at her. “Hm?”

“Come on.” She scowled. “We’re going with.” 

Sloane, who had stayed close to them, jerked his head up at her announcement. “What?” He uttered incredulously. “Your highness, I can’t allow you to come with us. We are heading into an unknown disaster zone, and…”

“My place is with my people, Commander,  _ not _ hiding behind on a military base while civilians suffer and the soldiers of Atlantis risk their lives to save them!” Bezel snapped back at the older man, still running on righteous fury and drunk on purpose.

Sloane recoiled as if she’d slapped him in the face. “But…” Bezel just scowled and stared at him even harder, and Sloane finally shook his head. 

“Do as you will. But take no chances. Your life is too important, your highness.”

“My Knight will be with me.” Bezel informed the military leader, grabbing hold of the Knight’s hand and squeezing it tight. “I fear nothing while he is with me.”

Sloane looked from her to him, and then to their joined hands, then sighed and ran a hand through his hair. He stabbed a finger at the Knight.

“Boy, you keep her safe. No matter what.” He growled out.

“I will always protect her.” The Knight vowed, and only the severity of the crisis in progress kept him from blushing as she squeezed his hand even tighter.

 

***

 

_ The Town of Dapana _

_ Eastern Aroca, by Lake Changas _

  
  


Dapana was burning when the 242nd RRD flew in. The fires were spread all around, brighter than the first glimpse of the pink dawn over the horizon clouded by black smoke, and punctuated by screams.

The Knight shivered a bit, but with Bezel already on edge and going pale as the enormity of the task ahead of them set in, he falsified a strength and surety he didn’t feel and slipped into the mien that he had picked up in training, and in the short time he’d been a squire in Sloane’s command before Zolim. 

When he set their skyskiff down on the edge of Dapana, he grabbed for Bezel’s arm, holding her still before she could charge off into the fray. In the darkness of just before the dawn, in the glow of firelight and a slowly brightening horizon, he pulled out the small amulet she had made for him, and given to him, at the start of his tenure as her protector, Her Knight.

**_“You’re so brave. Don’t ever stop being brave.”_ ** The voice of his mother whispered between them as he snapped it open. Bezel’s terrified eyes settled at that, and the Knight nodded to her.

“Stay close to me.” He warned her. “Remember what we came here to do. If you panic, if you don’t stay in control, you might get hurt. Other people will get hurt. People will die.” He blinked. “ _ Your _ people.”

Bezel blinked twice and nodded, removing her arm from his grip. “I’ll be careful.”

“Good. Please remember how important you are.” He told her firmly. 

“You and Sloane both.” Bezel muttered, shaking her head. “You can relax. If the king even breathes a word about me being in danger because of you, I’ll tell him off. I’m not that important to him, not really.”

“You are important to  _ me _ Bezel.” The Knight declared angrily, and winced and shut his eyes afterwards. Damnit. Of all the... _ why _ had he just opened his mouth and  _ said _ that?

His eyes snapped back open when he felt her hand cup the side of his face, and he stood frozen as she smiled at him with slightly watery eyes. “I know.” She said. “But you have to be careful as well. All right?”

“Yes.” The Knight rasped, wondering and hopeful and praying that the open longing pulsing through his body didn’t show up on his face. “Do you trust me?”

Bezel’s head went up and down exactly once. “You are my Knight. I trust you with my life.” Her hand dropped away from his face and squeezed his. They shared a smile, and in the darkness of the early morning, the Knight found the courage to dare a little more, stroking the pad of his thumb across the back of her hand. She breathed a little louder, and he let go.

“Stay close to me.” He repeated, and then they were running into the collapsed town, running towards the fires and the screams.

 

***

 

_ 2 Hours Later _

  
  


The 242nd Division still wasn’t quite at full strength after the Zolim massacre, and the wounded from Portstand had slowed down the followup wave of emergency tents and supplies and medics. The first wave of search and rescue poured through the city from all directions, doing their best to manage a semblance of a grid search. As the sky lightened further and honest morning light settled over them, the searching got easier. It also became much more pressing, because the more time that passed without help getting to the still trapped Dapanians, the more likely that injuries would become serious injuries, and serious injuries would result in casualties. 

The citizens of Dapana who had been lucky enough to escape the devastating earth-shake with a minimum of damage helped out, and the Atlantean tongue passed between rescuers and survivors with more than a smattering of Arocan. The Knight found himself pressed into the role of translator for one squad of RRD Knights who lacked anyone capable of speaking the native tongue, and it was only Bezel’s presence right by his side that kept him grounded enough to keep going.

There was just too much. Too much destruction, too much rubble, too much pain and screaming, or worse, not enough screaming. Somehow, through exhaustion and fatigue, he found the strength to keep going. 

 

And then the aftershock hit. 

 

Buildings that they hadn’t yet gotten to collapsed completely as the land trembled, still not done moving, and the Knight hissed as he helped Bezel up off of the ground. A splinter of wood from a house’s cross-beam had sliced across her forehead, bleeding profusely as such nicks around the face tended to do. She let out a gasp as he dug out a clean cloth from his back and pressed it to the wound.

“I’m all right.” She told him, her eyes slightly dizzy.

“You are  _ not _ all right.” He snapped back at her, looking around to yell for a medic and swallowing it back when he realized that they were cut off and alone. The two story affair that they had been next to and about to check out had given out completely. They were cut off from the main street, and the unit they had been traveling with was somewhere on the other side of the pile of what used to be a building. “Damn, this better not scar. And  _ hold still _ already, you’re hurt!”

“There...there were people in that house.” Bezel stammered, and she pushed him off of her, spinning around to the entire block of the neighborhood that had at most one standing wall left to a house or building. “There were people everywhere! We have to find them!” 

“I have to get you to safety first!” The Knight shouted at her, grabbing her shoulder and refusing to let go, and refusing to shake her as well. She was hurt, she was dizzy, and if she didn’t have a concussion, she was lucky.

“No!” Bezel pushed him away from her with some lingering trace of strength, and shook her head wildly. “The people, they…”

The Knight did the only thing he could to keep her from fighting him off, to keep her from hurting herself. He pulled her into his arms and held her tight, refusing to let go.

She crumbled against him, quiet aside from her sniffling. She still wanted to save everyone in Dapana. The Knight didn’t want to tell her that it might be too late.

A skyskiff flew overhead and located them, and Knight Commander Sloane himself descended down the ship’s rope ladder, yelling his name. The Knight nodded to the man as he raced to their side.

“Is the princess all right?” Sloane demanded breathlessly.

“Splinter grazed her forehead.” The Knight answered. “She might be concussed.”

Sloane breathed. “Okay. Come on, your highness. Up into the skiff. We’re pulling back, we’ve done all we can.”

“No.” Bezel protested, but weaker than before. Her hands were scraped as raw as the Knight’s were from digging through stone and wood and smoldering thatching and charred ruins. “No, there are still...still people here.”

“And we can’t do anything for them.” Sloane told her gently. “We don’t know where to look, and everything’s rubble now. The after-shake did what the first upheaval started. This place is a crater of ruins. We could still dig, yes, but without knowing exactly  _ where _ to dig, we’d be wasting our time and our strength.” The Knight stepped back as Sloane knelt down. “Climb on my back, your highness. I’ll get you up to the ship.” 

It was a burst of power that the Knight Commander wouldn’t have ordinarily expended, but the spell-fueled leap took him and the princess up to the deck of the skyskiff, while the Knight, too tired to repeat the trick, settled for climbing up the ladder. Once aboard, he checked Bezel and found the medic on board already applying a bandage to stop the bleeding and then running a low-grade healing spell over her forehead.

“We can’t stay any longer, your highness.” Sloane told her. There was apology in his tone. “We cannot save who we cannot find.”

Bezel blinked at that, tears in her eyes. She didn’t want to accept it, the Knight knew. She didn’t dare to think of a thing like acceptable losses. In that moment, flying in the skies above a town turned to burning ruins, she was exactly the same as the girl who had stumbled out of the shelter up on Atlantis and cried herself sick to see everyone that went hungry and hurting and abandoned by the royal family and their subordinates. 

And then there was a moment of stillness as she blinked, and something wild and ferocious appeared in her stare. The Knight recognized it. 

Bezel had an idea.

“If...If you could find them?” She asked, low and hopeful and just short of a plea. 

“We can’t. Not in time.” Sloane repeated.

“But if you could.” Bezel shot back. “If you  _ could _ find them, trapped in the rubble…”

Sloane cocked his head to the side, finally catching on. “You can find them?” He asked carefully.

“I...I have to try.” Bezel stammered, and tried to walk to the rail of the skyskiff. Her legs gave out on her, and the Knight was at her side in an instant, catching her, picking her up, cradling her in his arms.

“You need to rest, Bezel.” The Knight insisted, and ignored how the others within earshot gasped at the complete lack of formality in his address.

Her head swiveled back and forth. “Put...put me down. By the rail.” He stared at her, and she stared up in growing frustration. “Please.”

“I’m not letting go of you.” He swore, setting her down on the deck, and she curled into a sitting position, grabbing the vertical slats of the guardrails with her hands and pulling her legs and her skirt up underneath her. 

She pressed her forehead against the bars, hissing against the pain, and closed her eyes.

“Please.” She whispered. “Please, please,  _ please _ work.”

The Knight didn’t dare ask her what she was doing, didn’t dare interrupt her. He knelt down beside her, one hand on the rail and the other resting on her back, just to reassure her. Just so she would know that she wasn’t alone. 

She breathed in and out, over and over again, and the faint glow of her blue aura manifested, glowing and going dull in equal measure. 

“What is she…” Another knight on the skyskiff started to say, and the Knight whirled about and glared at him.

“Quiet!” He snapped in a blazing whisper, and everyone on board the vessel went silent and stopped moving. The Knight glanced up to see Sloane looking down at him, and then at Bezel, no longer accusing, not wary or suspicious, but...sad, almost. 

Bezel kept breathing, and whatever Working she was conjuring up built up slowly. Bezel had strength, but she never expressed it as an oppressive force, demanding obeisance. 

A full minute after she started, Bezel inhaled sharply and her eyes opened.

The emerald eyes he saw in his dreams were gone, replaced by the brilliant glow of a pale blue tinged with pink.

Bezel pulled her head back from the bars, and one of her arms separated. It was the motion of a moment for her to point to the ground beneath them. “There.” She whispered, indicating the rubble that had been the building they had been next to. “Three people. One’s...they’re fading, I...I think they’re dying.”

Sloane whirled around and barked out orders, and another skyskiff blazed in, the knights jumped out and started using spells of telekinesis to lift away the debris, guided by her remarkably accurate directions. Three people were dug out of the ruins; a man and a woman, and a young child, gasping for air that wouldn’t come because of a punctured lung. The healers got to work, and more ships flew in as word got out over the far-senders’ messages that they were finding more survivors and needed help  _ now _ . 

The Knight stayed at her side, grounding her as Sloane guided the skiff over the ruins of Dapana, and one block at a time, one rescue crew guided at a time, for countless minutes or hours, the princess became the diviner for them all.

All those lives saved, and somehow, she didn’t stop. Couldn’t stop. Not until she looked around when the sun was high up in the sky and her eyes fluttered and the glow disappeared. Then her eyelids slid shut and she gave out, falling backwards into the Knight’s arms, exhausted and depleted of all but the barest trace of her magic.

“Did...did we…” She tried to talk. Tried and failed, and lay in his arms trembling slightly from the work.

“You did it, Bezel.” The Knight reassured her. “You saved them.” He looked up to Sloane, surprised to find him staring at them in wonder.

No, not at them. At her. And so was the rest of the crew.

“You saved them.” The Knight repeated, and Bezel’s timid smile came in response. 

She finally gave into the bone-chilling need for rest, and fell asleep in his arms.

 

***

 

_ 242nd RRD Relief Camp _

_ The Outskirts of Dapana, Eastern Aroca _

_ Evening _

  
  


Over 200 tents had been put up in a matter of hours, even as more supplies were flown in and the rescued Arocans were brought in one skiff-load at a time. Among that sea of tents was one where two Mage Knights were posted as guards, and where inside, the Knight sat vigil while Princess Bezel Lantea, the royal who had ordered an entire Rapid Response Division to hang the supplies and save the people, lay sleeping and insensate to the world.

She lay there on a cot with no trace of finery and only a rough woolen blanket to keep her warm, looking paler than he had ever seen her before. The only color was in her blazing red hair, and even that was a shade lighter than usual. He had never seen her so tired, so worn.

Bezel was just fourteen years old, and...and she…

The Knight sat at her bedside and clasped one cold hand between his warm ones, as if he could pass more than just the warmth of his skin to her. He sat there and watched her breathe in shallow, steady paces, and stayed mute. He didn’t dare open his mouth to say anything, because he knew if he did, it would all come spilling out of him, and it would ruin everything.

 

There was a muffled shuffling as the canvas flap at the front of the tent was pushed back, and he turned to see Knight Commander Sloane step inside. The Knight started to rise and salute, but Sloane shook his head and then forced him back down. “Any change?” Sloane asked in a rough voice. He’d been giving orders all day, and it seemed to have finally caught up with him.

The Knight shook his head. “Not yet, sir.”

“Mana exhaustion.” Sloane explained, looking down at her face before pulling up another collapsible chair and sitting on the opposite side of the bed. “It doesn’t matter who you are. If you push yourself to the limits of your strength, there’s a rest period that goes with it.” The old knight smiled a little. “She’s a spitfire, our princess. I didn’t think she had it in her.”

“She is more than people think she can be.” The Knight explained, humming a little. 

“Just like you were.” Sloane agreed, and intentionally glanced down to their hands, joined against protocol. The Knight looked from their hands up to Sloane’s face and squeezed her fingers again, and silently dared him to say something against it.

Sloane closed his eyes and sighed. “What kind of spell was that that she used?” He inquired, dropping the matter. “She was finding...everyone. With no failure rate. Every place she pointed, every person she warned us about, they were right where she said they would be. Right as she said they would be.”

“I wish I had the answer, sir.” The Knight told him. “She’s been trying to map out the leylines of Terra, and…” He paused. “In the Grand Savannah. She...I got up one morning, and she was already up and outside, just watching everything. She said she could feel everything. That she was looking for magic, but that she felt life instead.” The Knight shook his head. “Her eyes weren’t glowing at the time, though. That was new today.”

“If she could find out a way to duplicate it, to teach others how to do that...it would revolutionize search and rescue operations.” Sloane went on. “She could change the world.”

“She already has.” The Knight said, and smiled down at her. “She could do so much good, and she despairs that she cannot do more.”

“She does it for you.” Sloane accused him, and the Knight’s smile faltered as he jerked his head up. “I’m serious, boy. She is nothing like her brothers. She...she’s becoming a princess worth following.”

“She would still be that if I weren’t here.” The Knight protested. “I am just her knight. Nothing more.”

Sloane looked pained at that, but he was deprived of the chance to say anything further when Bezel finally stirred, squeezing down on the Knight’s hand and letting out a soft moan.

“Your highness?” Sloane exclaimed, leaning forward a bit. “Princess Bezel, how are you feeling?”

“Tired.” She said, her eyes fluttering open. She looked up to Sloane, and then turned her head slightly until she saw who was holding her hand. It made her blink before she smiled and relaxed for all of a second, then remembered where she was. “Dapana! The people, are they…”

“They are alive, your highness.” Sloane told her. “More than I had thought we would be able to save. They are alive because of you.”

She all but slumped at the report. “Good.” She breathed out. “That’s-that’s good. And your knights?”

“Tired and worn out, princess, but they’ll live as well. We’ve currently made camp outside of Dapana, and we have our staff treating the injured and seeing to some decent meals for everyone.” Sloane paused. “Your highness, that spell you used…To find everyone? How did you do that?”

“I don’t know.” Bezel confessed. “I have an idea, but I’m still working on it. There’s still so much I don’t understand.”

“When you do complete it, your highness, I would love to see the finished product.” Sloane said. “We were able to save so many people today because of it. If we could find people trapped like that all the time, it would make our jobs so much easier.”

“When Command allowed you to.” Bezel pointed out bitterly. Sloane nodded.

“When we are ordered to.” He corrected her. “By Command...or by royalty.” Sloane pushed himself up out of his seat. “Your highness, now that you’re up and about, we need to get some warm food into you. The best treatment for mana exhaustion is good food, lots of rest, and  _ no spellcasting _ for at least two days.”

“Three.” The Knight said automatically, because that was the number quoted in the regulations.

“Two.” Sloane rebuked him. “That is about as long as I should expect either of you to slow down. Having spent significant time with her highness outside of the confinement of expected decorum, I have learned that our princess is rather forcefully impatient when it suits her.”

“When it matters.” Bezel spoke up with a harrumph, and then went pale as she realized that she had spoken up as though it had just been her and the Knight on their own. Sloane stunned the Knight further by only chuckling a little and shaking his head, walking to leave the tent.

“I’ll be waiting outside to escort you two. Take your time getting up, your highness. Dizziness is also another symptom.” The Knight Commander departed, and Bezel slowly started to sit up, with the Knight steadying her.

“They’re really safe?” Bezel asked him, when they were alone.

“Yes.” The Knight said to her. “There are likely still dead in Dapana after the earthquake, but everyone that we could have rescued, everyone who was still breathing and holding on…” He paused. “Don’t scare me like that again, Bezel.”

“I am not weak.” She berated him. “I do not need you to coddle me and tell me I cannot do things. Isn’t that why you have been training me to defend myself?”

The Knight paused, stung by that bit of temper that sank into her words. It could have so easily just been a minor protest, but it could have also been something more. And he had to know.

“Do you still need me?” He asked her, and she jolted at the question.

“You are my Knight.” 

“Do you still need me?” He repeated, and looked away, not wanting to see the refusal in her eyes. Because she was so strong, and brave, and wise, and she had stood up to a military commander and defied his orders to save so many lives.

He startled when her hands came up and wrapped around his face, turning it so he could not look away from her. She wasn’t crying, but she was sad.

“You are my Knight, and I trust you with my life. There is  _ nobody else _ that I would want by my side.” She paused, looked down and worried at her lip, then her eyes came back up again. “If I do not  _ need _ you, sir knight, am I allowed to  _ want _ you?”

His blood thundering in his ears, afraid to blink, afraid to breathe, afraid to say a word because he was so close to breaking now at her confession, the Knight settled for a nod.

“You will stay with me?” She pleaded with him. He nodded again.

An easy relief fell into place between them, and Bezel let go of his face, smiling. He stood, stepped away from the bed as she threw the blanket back and eased herself out of it. It was too much, too much too fast, and he desperately needed the distance and the space.

That momentary reprieve lasted up until they stepped out of her tent and took two paces past the guards protecting it.

Then, Bezel and the Knight found themselves staring agog into a sea of faces. Arocan and Asan and Eurosian civilians from the flattened town stood in the dark, illuminated by candlelight or the floating orbs of red and yellow spell-lights above the heads of the few magic users among them. There was even a single green spell-light conjured between two girls clasping hands. All of them looked on Bezel in wonder, in reverence, and in awe. Whispers came from the crowd in Arocan and Atlantean, indistinct and hard to place exactly.  _ Bezel. The Princess. The Finder.  _

Three steps to the right of the tent, Knight Commander Sloane cleared his throat. “They wanted to see you, your highness. They wanted to thank you, for what you have done for them. For what nobody else would have  _ thought _ to do for them.”

She was shaken, so terribly shaken at the sight of so many faces who looked at her in gratitude and care. The Knight wondered if any member of the royal family had ever been given such looks of loyalty and goodwill in generations.

The loyalty of those who knew that someone in power  _ cared  _ about them.

Bezel reached for his hand, grasped it tight, and pulled the Knight beside her, and they walked forward. The crowd parted like a wave. Some kneeled, others merely stood and whispered thanks in Atlantean and in Arocan. Hands reached for them, fingers traced their arms, his shoulders, they brushed past the red shawl of Arocan design and make that she had been given and worn all through the rescue. Somehow, she kept from weeping, though he still saw the tears gathering in her eyes. He knew she wanted to tell them to stand, that she didn’t deserve this, that she didn’t want this. But she kept her silence, and let them say what they needed to, let them make their gestures of thanks and praise. She would not dare cheapen their feelings, lessen the value of what they offered up.

It was when she whispered back to them in Arocan,  _ “You saving deserved,” _ that the singing began.

Arocan songs of joy and gratitude followed them all the way to the mess tent.

 

***

 

_ Portstand RRD Encampment _

_ Dalum Province, Aroca _

_ 1 Week Later _

  
  


The 242nd Division could not linger around Dapana forever, and once the last of the survivors had been treated and patched up, and the worst of the debris had been cleared away to make room for rebuilding, they had packed up everything that the survivors did not need to keep surviving as they put their lives back together and flown back to Portstand where Knight Commander Sloane had filed a long and very thorough after-action report, detailing the bravery and heroism of Princess Bezel Lantea in first prioritizing the rescue of civilians over equipment by royal decree, and her further involvement in locating so many survivors that would have died buried without her assistance. For the part of the Dapanians, they had made sure to craft gifts for their rescuers. Every Mage Knight and medic and staff member who had been there to save them, heal them, and cook for them received a carved wooden trinket from a local tree, an icon of no real magical power but which was famous in their folklore for granting good luck. Bezel received a much more impressive gift, in the form of a carved and lacquered wooden staff empowered by small spells of hardness and durability by the local shaman  _ ‘so that you will carry the strength of Aroca with you always’ _ as the town’s surviving Elder had explained to her as it was passed over. The Knight could find no fault in the gift. She would certainly put it to good use. As time passed back at Portstand, she’d quickly adopted more and more clothing appropriate to the region, and relied less on what she had brought with her. The result made her look even more exotic and alluring than she had been from the start, and endeared her even further to the Arocans who continued to educate her and the Knight in their native tongue.

They had stayed at Portstand for a week as she finished her recovery and waited for supply to finish requisitioning all that the 242nd had expended in the rescue of Dapana. There was much that the base needed first before they could take what they required for the next leg of their trip around the world, and while Bezel rested and continued to learn Arocan from the base staff who were natives and glowed to be in her presence. The Knight made himself useful by joining the men on hunts, trying to hone his skills of stealth and bringing back much needed meat for the cookfires while the foodstores were depleted. 

The morning of their appointed day of departure, another knight greeted them at breakfast and passed along the message that Knight Commander Sloane wished to speak to the princess before she left. The Knight, as her protector and guardian, knew his own attendance was mandatory. 

Sloane was sitting at his desk when they walked into his office, and the older knight rose and bowed his head when she walked in with the Knight three steps behind her.

“Your highness.” Sloane greeted her. “I trust you are feeling much better?”

Bezel smiled and called up her magic, letting the soft blue aura linger in her open hand for a bit before she dismissed it. “Well enough. You have been a most gracious host, but it is time for us to move on.”

“I suppose there are those who would wish you to continue your tour of the provinces.” Sloane said diplomatically, and the Knight held back a wiry grin at the subtext. There had been a message passed on from Atlantis, her eyes only of course, where her father told her in so many words to stop fooling around in matters beneath her concern and do what she had been sent Below to do. Not that the classification kept her from talking about it with him afterwards...or shoving the letter in his face at first when she was too angry to do even that much.

“There have been some words to that effect.” Bezel nodded. “Of course, I find that one can achieve much between places of interest.”

“One certainly can, yes.” Sloane agreed, hesitating. “Is...there anything you would wish me to pass on to the troops? Or to the Dapanians?”

“Only that I wish them well.” Bezel’s formal tone softened. “And that I hope that your knights will continue to remember that the oath they took was not meant to serve a king; it was to protect the people.”

“After last week, your highness, I don’t think any of my knights will forget that lesson anytime soon.” Sloane told her. “We fight  _ exenos _ and the things from beyond the Veil and can so easily be lost in that. Unofficially speaking, I am glad you gave the order to mobilize for Dapana. It has caused some tremors within Command and among the other divisions, and that shakeup was needed.”

The Knight Commander reached into his desk and pulled out a small, overly thick metal token, branded with the symbol of the 242nd Division. He set it on his desk and then slid it across in front of them. “Your Knight can tell you what this is.”

Bezel looked from the gold and silver medallion to him curiously, and the Knight swallowed as he reached a hand out and traced the surface, searching with his magical senses just enough to feel the charge inside of it. “It is an emergency beacon.” He said, picking it up and then pressing it into Bezel’s hand. “It contains the Working of an alarm spell coded to the division it comes from, and if you concentrate on it, you will be able to cast it. Depending on how much mana you can feed into it, the range of that signal will be augmented.”

“Your Knight, in practice, was able to empower it enough to broadcast halfway across the continent of Aroca before the signal was lost.” Sloane explained further. “If you were to cast the spell inscribed in it, your highness, I have no doubt we would hear it from anywhere you were in the world.” The old knight smiled. “I suspect you are in the habit of looking for trouble. It would do my old heart a world of good to know that you can call for help if it is needed.”

 

Bezel squeezed the enspelled token in her hand and looked to the Knight Commander. “Why are you giving this to me?” She asked him. “Were you ordered to?”

“No. I wasn’t.” Sloane quickly dismissed that idea. “I want you to have it.”

“Why?” Bezel wondered aloud. “I had thought that…” She bit her lip and looked away. “I thought that you disliked me.”

“I did.” Sloane admitted. “When I first met you after Zolim and the hearing, I thought you were just like your father and your brothers. Just another member of the nobility who thought that everything in the world was theirs for the taking, and people were only slightly better than objects.”

The Knight’s eyes shot to his hairline as he listened to Sloane speaking treason, or at the very least, comments that were wildly insubordinate. Bezel shook her head wildly.

“I’m not! I didn’t!” She protested.

“I know that  _ now _ your highness.” Sloane said warmly. “You must be an incredible actress when it suits you. You had me and everyone else believing that you wanted this boy over here as your protector only because he was the sole survivor of the Zolim Incident.” He held up a hand to stop her as she stammered and blushed. “I don’t need to know why, and I don’t want to. Your reasons are your own, and they’re between you and him. The less I know, the better. The point, Princess Bezel Lantea, is that I took you for your father’s daughter, and I was wrong.”

Sloane set his hand flat on his desk and peered at Bezel with sorrowful, longing eyes. “You are your mother’s daughter, and so much like her.”

Bezel inhaled sharply, and the Knight’s hands squeezed at the tops of his greaves. 

The Queen. Aine Lantea. Dead in childbirth, bringing her third child and only daughter into the world.

“You knew my mother?” Bezel whispered. Sloane kept looking at her, and the girl’s green eyes trembled. “Nobody ever talks about her.”

Sloane finally closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. “I never did give you a proper birthday present, your highness. Allow me to give it to you now. I am going to tell you a story. And you might just believe me.”

 

Bezel went still, her breathing stilled to silent cycles, and she sat and watched with the Knight beside her as Alastair Sloane drifted into memory behind his closed eyes and found the strength to talk.

“Her name was Aine Aibulwalt, and she lived on the isle of Cault off the coast of Euros, the youngest daughter of a minor lord. A boy lived there, the son of a merchant turned herdsman, and grew up with her. She could summon up magic and cast illusions, and loved to sing and dance when she wasn’t knitting things out of wool. She had hair the color of a warm sunset and her eyes?” Sloane wavered. “She had your eyes.”

Bezel’s eyes watered up at that, and the Knight felt a thundering in his heart growing fast.

“She was the boy’s dearest friend, and as w... _ they _ grew and came into their power, they realized that…” Sloane stopped, breathed in fast and out slowly, and shook his head. “He made a vow to her. She was nobility and he was a commoner, but her family wasn’t prominent. She had an older brother set to inherit, and her parents liked him. She dreamed of traveling the world and singing, telling stories and making people smile. He only wanted to be at her side, and keep her safe against whatever life might throw at them.”

Sloane finally opened his eyes, one single bitter laugh escaping him. “Now imagine that the royal family of Atlantis is conducting a tour of its holdings. Imagine that a young and beautiful noble-born daughter from a lesser house who loves to sing and dance is asked by a more prominent Duke to make an appearance as part of the evening’s entertainment. And imagine that a brash and assured Crown Prince Volkas Lantea happens to be in that mansion when she sings for that room.” He looked to Bezel for a moment, then spun his gaze, those hard and bitter eyes whose depths were finally revealed, onto the Knight. “Imagine how little the protests of that young woman matter, imagine how little her dreams matter when the prince of all the world decides that she is lovely enough, powerful enough, to be his bride, and her family dare not refuse the dowry and incur the wrath of Atlantis.”

Sloane breathed through his nose. “Where do you suppose that leaves the boy who grew up herding sheep, selling wool, and training to be that lady’s husband and defender?”

 

“No.” Bezel whispered.

It was an old, old pain, the Knight realized. It hadn’t crushed him and forced him into the ground, but as Sloane sat there and stared at his desk, the Knight saw the cracks running through him.

He saw all the bitter warnings and doubts and angry remarks that Alastair Sloane had said to him over the years about not becoming attached, learning to accept his place, in a new light. Not one born out of a desire to spare the Knight’s career, or because it would be an embarrassment.

**You really are too much like me for your own good.**

Sloane had warned him against it because he had  _ lived through that pain _ and come out on the other side forever changed.

Sloane brought a hand up to his mouth, rubbed at it. Mustered the resolve to keep going. “So. Aine Aibulwalt was wed to Prince Volkas Lantea, and a little over a year later, he was crowned Mage King after the death of his father. Their firstborn son, Desmond, was born. And as for that sheep herder’s son?”

Sloane reached into his pocket and produced a small bit of waterproofed leather, bundled tightly and held by a drawstring. He set it on the desk and shook his head. “He left before the wedding took place, enlisted in the Mage Knights. She never saw him again, never even had the chance to explain herself. Aine’s mother met the boy before he left, and gave him a token that the future queen wanted him to have.”

 

Eyes wet and blurry, Bezel reached for the small parcel and undid the string. It hadn’t been opened often, but the leather was worn from where it had been rubbed against whatever was inside countless times over.

Inside that bag, smaller than her palm, was a shorn lock of dark red hair tied around a plain silver engagement ring. Not a ring that the nobility would have, golden and bearing gemstones, but a ring of less precious and more affordable metal. The kind of ring that a shepherd’s boy might be able to afford.

“I thought that everything...Everything that  **I** loved about her was lost. That she became queen and never looked back, and that nothing of the girl, the woman I loved, survived after Volkas claimed her as his own. I joined the RRD, vowed never to look on her face again, and learned what I needed to survive. I looked on her sons and saw nothing but their father in them, and nothing of her warmth and compassion. But now? I look at you, princess, and I,” Sloane’s voice caught, “I  _ see her. _ She is in you. You never had the chance to know her, but she is with you. All the best parts of her are in you. The way you laugh, the way you smile. The way you  _ care _ when the rest of your family does not. My Aine would be proud to call you her daughter, Bezel.”

 

Bezel was out of her chair and running around Sloane’s desk before he finished, and she hugged him tight and buried her face into his neck. The Knight watched, his chest aching for a hundred different reasons as Sloane, the unbreakable mountain of a man who weathered every storm, held her back and cried from tightly shut eyes.

“You would have been such a good father.” Bezel whispered to him.

Sloane choked at her words.

“Thank you for telling me your story.” She added, finally pulling back from him. She too was crying, but there was happiness there as well. “It was a wonderful gift.”

Sloane shook his head, and motioned to the ring and the lock of red hair tied to it. 

Her mother’s hair. “That is your gift.” He told her, pulling himself together.

Bezel looked at it, shook her head. “No. She wanted you to have that. It’s yours, it’s all you have to remember her by.”

Sloane laughed and wiped his eyes dry. “No. I have the memory of Aine, and her daughter lives in the world at last, traveling just like she wanted to.” He nodded to Bezel. “You deserve to have something of your mother. You deserve to have a reminder of who you came from. And I may not be your father, but...If you’re ever in trouble, you use that emergency beacon, Bezel. You use it, and I will come running.” He looked to the Knight, the weight still there in his face, but once more hidden away, stored, filed. “I’ll come for both of you.”

The Knight found himself woodenly nodding his head while Bezel laughed again and wrapped up her mother’s hair and the forgotten engagement ring back into its small leather pouch. 

He didn’t dare speak, for fear of going mad from screams or sobs.

 

***

 

_ The Continent of Asa, Waddi Province _

_ The Shore of the Crimson Sea _

_ The Evening of The Knight’s 15th Birthday _

  
  


By mutual silent agreement, the Knight and Princess Bezel both opted to leave certain topics alone. Or rather, he never brought them up, and she was observant enough, or patient enough, to not press the subject of Sloane’s past, or their mothers, or how the Knight was dealing with the revelations that Queen Aine Lantea had loved another before the king, and how the loss of her had driven Sloane to become the hardened mage knight who refused to step foot on Atlantis. He never talked about it, and he never stopped thinking about it.

They weren’t children, not really. He was old enough to serve. Old enough to die. And she had told him faintly that she was old enough to be courted, and it had long been spoken of that she would be married off when she turned 17. 

And Sloane had lived all of this before. He had loved Bezel’s mother, lost her when she became queen, and steeped in silence and bitterness as everything that they had wanted in the world was torn from them. And Sloane had known,  _ known _ that the Knight loved Bezel even before he did. Had tried to warn him away from it. Had failed to, and in the end, told Bezel and him the truth that made up their broken world.

They traveled at a sedate pace, in no hurry and with no real desire to go directly from Portstand base to the next province capital. She still had readings to take, and the spell she had cast to find the trapped Dapanians to figure out. They trained, Bezel steadily improving with the staff that the Arocans had given her, and the Knight steadily increasing the difficulty of their spars. She could still overpower him on magic alone, and probably always would, but he saw stronger traces and lines of blue that shot through his green aura as time had gone on. They traveled together, cooked together, ate together, washed their clothes side by side in the rivers and streams they passed by. 

And yet, for as close as they were, the shock of Sloane’s past, the heavy weight of a forgotten engagement ring bundled in a lock of Aine Lantea’s hair had opened up a chasm between them. He still smiled at her, but it was guarded, and as time went on, she picked up on it.

He was Her Knight, and she trusted him with her life. She reminded him of that every day, and the Knight sometimes found himself answering back when she got worried that the same was true. That he trusted her with his life. But there was so much he did not say, could not.

How could he tell her the truth?  _ I am in love with you and Sloane knows, and if I give into it I will end up just like him, broken and old and bitter. _ Even worse, he feared, was what it might do to her. She had her whole life ahead of her, a life so full of promise, a life that would change the world. He could stand by her side and protect her and keep her safe, but that would be all.

 

A little over two and a half weeks after they left Portstand, they had flown over the Crimson Sea and made camp on the opposite shore of that long expanse between the continents of Aroca and Asa. Dinner had been consumed and he tended the fire after finishing the cleaning of their dishes, setting it so that it would be down to embers by morning. Bezel had set up their tents, side by side, and worked in silence. He could see the tension over her as the first of the night stars appeared in the darkening blue sky. It was in the way she moved so slowly and methodically when their time in the wilderness had given her the experience to set up and break down their tents and bedrolls three times as fast. It was in the way she would look in his direction from the side of her eye when she swept her lustrous red hair behind her ear. It was in how she nibbled at her lower lip when she thought he wasn’t looking.

She had been doing that for days now, but hadn’t demanded him to open up and tell her what he was thinking about. Tonight, though, something changed. Tonight, she went to her satchel and dug out something, hiding it behind her back before turning and walking to him.

“Sir knight?” She said to him softly. “Could you stand for a moment?”

He did so, and looked down at her, for he was now slightly more than a head taller than she was after another growth spurt. “Yes, your highness?” And hid his wince when her face fell.

“You know my name, and we are alone.” She reminded him.

“I’m sorry, Bezel.” He apologized. “What did you need?”

She  _ fidgeted _ at his question. “Do you know what day this is?” The Knight blinked and thought about it. He did not.

Bezel pulled out the object from behind her back and held it up to him. A small honeycake wrapped in wax leaves. “It’s your birthday.” She told him.

“Oh.” The Knight blinked again, more rapidly, and reached out for it. A cake.

She had gotten him a cake. Nobody had done anything like it for years, not since his mother…

“Thank you.” He told her. “You didn’t have to. I’m not…”

She jammed a finger into his chest. “One of these days, I am going to get you to admit that you matter just as much as I do.” Bezel scowled, and the Knight heard another voice beneath hers, soft but never forgotten, kept enshrined in long ago lessons.

**Don’t let anyone ever tell you that you’re not important. That you don’t matter.**

“As you say.” The Knight smiled, and gestured for her to sit beside him. Creating a thin blade out of magic, he carved the tiny dessert into two halves, just enough for each of them to have three bites each. He relished in the flavor of it, flour that wasn’t coarse, and with wild honey soaked through it all. His fingers were coated with the sticky sweetness after, and he carefully sucked them dry, watching with a now familiar ache as Bezel did the same.

She looked at him again after they were done, grinning in the conspiratorial fashion she had when they shared in something that would have been improper or illicit in a setting around others.

As though sharing a dessert out in the wilderness were a great and terrible sin.

“You’re fifteen now.” She declared, and he nodded. “I’ve been told that there’s a tradition among Eurosians. About looking up at the stars, and wishing for something.”

The Knight cocked his head to the side. “I think it needs to be a falling star, Bezel.”

“Does it?” Bezel wondered. “But what if there isn’t one on your birthday?”

“The tradition doesn’t  _ require _ it to be a person’s birthday.”

“Oh.” She blinked. “That would make it easier.” She looked up and he followed her gaze, and as though the heavens had heard them, a bright flare appeared and streaked across the night sky before disappearing. She looked at him after in wide-eyed wonder. “Did you see it?”

He had, and he nodded. “Now you make a wish.” He told her, and closed his eyes.

“Any wish?” She whispered. “Even...even ones that can’t come true?”

“Especially those.” The Knight replied, feeling the ache in his chest deepen as he thought of this girl whose life he was so tangled up in, who possessed him in every way that mattered, and who he could never belong to the way he wanted to.

A long silence passed between them before she spoke again. “Did you make your wish?” Bezel asked, and he opened his eyes to find her looking at him with those emerald eyes of hers, dark and full...And resolved.

The Knight nodded. Bezel bit her lip and looked down at his chest. “I wished for something too. Can I do that? Can we share a wish on the same falling star?”

“I think so.” He struggled to get out, mustering false confidence. “But it’s less likely to happen if they were different wishes. At least, my mother used to say that.”

Her hand reached out, and she pressed her palm over the middle of his chest.

“I…” She got out, as he forgot how to breathe. “I have another present for you. Can I give it to you, my Knight?” She looked up at him again, those dark eyes so full of promise.

He could never deny her anything, and he stood there, his heart thrumming like a plucked string, and--

And her hand came up to the side of his face--

Her thumb caressed his lips--

Bezel, his fire-haired, emerald-eyed princess leaned in and up and closed her eyes, and he closed his--

It was their first true kiss, and it lasted nowhere near as long as he wanted it to, even as it blasted away all his resolve and the press of  _ want Want WANT _ became a drumbeat beneath his skin, a writhing, coiling mess that snapped and ached for her.

She pulled back, blushing madly, and started to turn away.

 

He could let her walk away, the Knight knew. He could let that be the end of it, and they would go on, the princess and her knight, and nothing between them would change. They could be just like Sloane and the queen, torn apart by the expectations of the world, living empty, bitter lives. Because in that small, trembling kiss, one last detail he had missed out on became apparent.

The Knight had thought his love was unrequited. It wasn’t. And Sloane had known it wasn’t. Maybe she didn’t feel as strongly for him as he did for her, but…

His hand snapped out and grabbed hold of her arm, stopping her from retreating. She stilled, turned around, and looked at him.

Her eyes were so open, so torn, and in this one moment, the Knight knew, if he asked, she would tell him the absolute truth, even though she was afraid of it. Even though he was.

 

“Bezel?” He croaked out. 

“Yes?” It was less of a whisper and more of a breathy moan.  _ Ask, _ that word seemed to beg him.  _ Just ask. _

He brought his hands to her face and held it gently, cradling her jaw and letting his fingers slide into the soft locks of her red hair. She breathed in sharply, and her chest rose towards him as her eyes flew wide open.

She said nothing, just stood there with her face in his hands, balancing on a precipice, waiting...Waiting to fall away or towards him.

The Knight licked his lips, whetting them, for they were so very dry, and his mouth was so very wet. “Do you trust me?” He asked her. Begged her. 

He waited then, too, waited and worried and wondered, for he wished for only one thing in his life, and had gone for so very long thinking it was an impossibility. But now...but now…

Tears gathered in her eyes, and her hand went to his chest again, her fingers curling over his thrumming pulse. “With my heart.” She answered him. He leaned down and in and kissed her as he had always wanted to, and her arms came around him and pulled him tightly to her as she kissed him back.

They fell together, not a princess and her knight, just a boy and a girl, and the rest of the world didn’t matter. It never had.


	6. And He Lived For Her Smile

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bezel and her Knight travel to a poor province on the border between Euros and Asa, continuing their tour of Below. Encountering violence, they chase after an outlaw plaguing the provincial authorities, and stumble headfirst into the most challenging web of danger she has yet encountered. Unsure of what is true and who is on the side of the angels, she holds him close, and hopes that they will be enough...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Recommended music for this chapter is as follows:
> 
> -"Sabotage", The Beastie Boys

**_Little Moment: The Sorceress And The Knight_ **

By Eric ‘Erico’ Lawson

* * *

**Five: And He Lived For Her Smile**

  
  


_ The Eurosian/Asan Wild Borderlands _

_ Morning _

  
  


Princess Bezel Lantea wondered sometimes why she, of all people, should have been born a princess of Atlantis with the world laid out at her feet. It was a thought she never dared give voice to. Certainly her father and her brothers would either laugh at her for her strange  _ girlish _ thinking or would chastise her and force her tutors to make her life hell again.

She knew what the standard answer was; that they were born to rule by divine right, that others were  _ lesser _ than they were. That their power, the strength of the magic in their blood was the symbol of their right to rule. But Bezel had seen enough of the world to know that everything that the royal family and nobility based the hierarchy of wealth, power, and labor on among the citizens of Atlantis and Below was wrong. That truth had been a gift from her Knight.

She knew the truth of their history now, because of her Knight and Knight Commander Sloane. That the royal family hadn’t been royal, but that her distant ancestor had merely been the head of Terra’s defenders, a skilled and powerful mage that surely must have loved their people. Bezel knew that the Below was just as important as Atlantis. No. It was  _ more _ important. She couldn’t give the words to it, but her heart felt it, knew it as truth. It was another gift from her Knight, who had shown her how deeply the less fortunate among her people suffered. She had cried when she saw how wrong it all was. How wrong she had been. How wrong everyone else still was. That pain was another gift from her Knight, because through it, he had shown her the world. He had given her something to work for, a purpose, when nobody else had ever thought that she was important enough to be given one.

Bezel knew now who her mother had been. That before she had been the Queen of Atlantis, that Aine had been a girl who loved to sing, who had fallen in love with a boy. A boy who became a man, who never forgot about her, even when the world took her away from him. She had been told that her mother would be so proud of her, not because of her magic, but because of her heart. That had been a gift from Sloane, the man who in another life she would have known as her father. A man who acted as one for her Knight. She would have never met Alastair Sloane without her Knight, would never have known. 

Bezel sometimes wondered how her life had become what it was. She was 14 now, and was ‘touring’ the Below to learn of it, ostensibly to serve as an advisor to her brother when he assumed the throne. But really, it had all been a chance to leave the palace, to leave all of the expectations behind for as long as possible, for her to figure out  _ who _ she was. And what was important.

Her Knight had given her so many gifts. Her life. Her dreams. Her truth. Her heritage. And even...No.  _ Especially _ his love. She had fallen in love with him when she was 13 and he woke up next to the duck pond in the park, and smiled at her. When he had turned 15…

It had only been a week ago, and she could still feel his lips on hers, his hands around her waist, buried in her hair, and the feel of his tongue inside her mouth. 

He had given her so much, and she felt so guilty about the unevenness of it. What had she ever done to deserve him, all of him?

 

Even now, as the morning broke over them again and she looked over to where he was sleeping, she misted up a little, wondering that question. Wondering how she had earned the love, the trust, the heart of her Knight. 

Bezel slipped out of the side of her bedroll, shivering a little in the cool morning air. He always slept with his sword close, no matter how potent the wards they put up. He’d always slept so lightly, but ever since he kissed her, he was more relaxed. More sure and steady. 

Her Knight didn’t wake up until she slipped into his bedroll and wrapped herself around him, and even then, it lacked the knee-jerk rush to full alertness. He let go of his sword and pulled both arms around her, then buried his nose into the top of her head and breathed in the smell of her hair.

Bezel hid her face in the side of his neck and closed her eyes.

“I don’t deserve you. You have given me so much.” Bezel spoke brokenly. “Please. Tell me what I can give you in return.”

He reached up and clasped her left shoulder, pushing her back far enough so he could look into her eyes. His gaze softened, and he brought his fingers up, wiping her tears away.

“How quickly you forget how much you’ve given me.” Her Knight said, his smile in his voice. “This is enough, Bezel.”

“But, I…”

“Do you trust me?” He interrupted her. Bezel went still, searching those perfect eyes of his, storm-blue and gray. 

“With my heart.” Bezel whispered, tracing the side of his face. 

Her Knight kissed her then, and her eyelids fluttered shut. “This is enough.” He said again, and held her close as he sighed and fell back asleep. She cuddled in close and listened to the sound of his heart beating, and thought of her mother Aine Aibulwalt and Alastair Sloane.

_ We won’t be like them, _ she thought to herself. She loved this man, and she would not suffer being torn away from him. She didn’t deserve him, but she wanted him. In one thing in her life, she would risk being selfish.

She still worried, though. They were coming up on the next province’s capital, where she and her Knight would once again have to slip on the masks that Atlantean society expected of them. This would be the first time since his confession that those masks would be tested.

The impulse to grab him and run away and disappear had never been so strong.

 

***

 

_ Ganarus Province, Far Eastern Euros/Asan Border _

_ Capital City of Khav _

  
  


The Baron of Ganarus Province was a man of dark, slicked hair and piercing brown eyes who had lived for 25 years. His name was Roland Gobeas, and he had the look of a man who had never gone hungry, but wasn’t prone to overindulgence. He did, however, believe in the finer things in life. And he believed in very little else.

“It is so  _ kind _ of you to take an interest in the affairs of Terra, your highness, but there is really no need for it.” Roland informed Bezel, as she sat with him for a light lunch in his mansion. “Surely your father has the best of men ruling in the Below to see to his interests. Even here, I am His Majesty’s loyal servant. Though I am afraid that Ganarus has little to offer Atlantis these days.”

“Oh? I am sorry to hear that.” Bezel remarked, pausing with her soup spoon halfway up to her mouth. She brought it up the rest of the way and sipped back the warm vegetable bisque, using the pause to use her peripheral vision to take sight of her Knight again. He was standing at attention just like the guards that Baron Gobeas had waiting along the back wall. His face was as calm and as cold as a stone, but Bezel could see the tension he carried so clearly now. Long days and nights of indeterminate length had helped her to paint a wonderful portrait of him, a portrait of how he looked when he was relaxed and at peace. Her Knight was not relaxed right now, and he certainly wasn’t at peace. He was constantly scanning the room, as he had the rest of the mansion on the way in, like he was searching for a threat.

“My knowledge of your province must be slightly outdated. Under your grandfather, there was a great deal of mining done in the Wul mountain range, and in your father’s time, there were innovations in farming.”

“This is true,” The Baron hedged, “however the mining veins were beginning to dry up in my father’s time, and the food crops are of  _ mundane _ fare. Nothing which could be used for trade goods, really, aside from the horses that populate the steppe, and Atlantis has little use for such beasts of burden.” He shrugged nonchalantly. “I am Baron of a poor province, your highness, and must make do with what the land provides. I only wish that I could do more to be of service to Atlantis.”

Bezel made a polite nod and stopped after another sip of bisque, leaving the bowl with a third of its contents remaining. Baron Gobeas had promised a  _ light _ five course meal, and years of dining in the royal court along with her classes on formal etiquette had made one thing clear; if you were going to make it through an entire formal meal, you  _ never _ ate everything that was on your plate.

Traveling with her Knight, she’d been witness to the much simpler and more appealing option of having only one course for a meal, usually a heartier dish of what could be foraged or hunted. 

Signaled by the baron, a pair of female servants came out to collect the dishes, and new plates were placed down in front of them, a small roasted fowl on a bed of wild grains, seasoned to perfection. Bezel admired it for a time, but as she turned her face up to thank the server, her mouth froze, partly opened. The woman’s face was pale, gaunt, and her cheeks were sunken. It looked as though she hadn’t had a good meal in days.

Bezel breathed in and out slowly to keep her magic from flaring around her, and tried very hard not to think of all the starving people who she had served up on Atlantis on the trips she took in secret with her Knight. It seemed the problem wasn’t unique to her father’s immediate territory.

“Baron.” She said, not moving to start on the course. “Tell me, how do your people fare?”

“They manage.” He explained calmly. “They are protected, and they enjoy the benefits of Atlantis. As much as they can where we live.”

Bezel’s right hand clenched up for a second before she forced it to relax again. “If that is so, why is it that your servants go hungry?” She asked innocently. The look from the baron almost made her smile. It was something between gagging, looking guilty, and being infuriated. 

Bezel had become more and more frustrated with the trappings that came with being royalty, but there was a benefit to being the daughter of the highest power in the land; very few people were willing to openly contradict her. It was time that that paid off again. 

She pushed her chair back and stood up, all bright smiles and easy calm as she picked up her own plate, then sauntered around the long table to the other end to scoop up the baron’s. “I find that I am full, and I thank you for your hospitality. But I would hate to see this food go to waste. Sir Knight?”

In a moment, her guardian, friend, and romantic interest all rolled into one was moving to stand at her side again. “Your highness?”

“Carry this for me, would you?” She said, half of it a request and the other half an order as she pushed the baron’s plate of roast fowl into his gloved hands. Bezel didn’t look at the nobleman as he sputtered in disbelief, and instead looked to his guards. “You there. I don’t suppose you could direct me to the kitchens, and the servant’s quarters?” 

The man did, though not before giving a careful sidelong glance to the baron, whose face wasn’t  _ quite _ going apoplectic. Her Knight masked his smile, though she noticed how he bit his cheek to manage it.

The servant’s quarters were buried in the lower levels of the mansion, tucked away beside the kitchen and their small dining room. The cooks were close to panicking when Bezel and her Knight and the guard appeared, fearing that some insult had been leveled or that she was unsatisfied with the meal. When Bezel explained her purpose in coming, they were confused, but did as she asked. A half hour later, the servants in the baron’s home were dining on the meal that had been meant for a royal audience, with Bezel asking them questions about their families, what they did, and innocent sounding things about the province. The guard had disappeared at her urging, but when she looked over to her Knight, who sat and ate with everyone else, she caught him looking at her once with crinkled eyes and nodding, ever so slightly, in approval of the stunt.

It had been upsetting and uncharacteristic and wholly unbecoming of a princess of the blood, and she didn’t give a damn about any of it. The servants got a decent meal, she actually got dinner conversation she could stomach, and the smile her Knight gave her made her feel warm from the inside out. But for some reason, he never stopped being on edge. She refrained from asking why until they’d said their farewells and headed out for an impromptu tour of the capital city.

“Why are you so troubled, my Knight?”

He had one hand on his sword as they walked down the road away from the Baron’s mansion. They would be expected back later that night, because she was a royal guest that the Baron was honor-bound to give hospitality to, but the day was theirs. Her Knight kept scanning everything around them.

“Sir Knight?”

He looked at her, a sidewards glance that didn’t last anywhere near long enough before he started searching for threats again. “Go nowhere without me, princess.”

“What?” Bezel blinked at the order. “Why?”

“I don’t trust this place.” 

“Because of Gobeas?” Bezel said, more quietly than before. She shook her head. “He’s rude and horrible to the servants, but…”

“If Atlantis collects so little in taxes from this province because it is so poor, where is the baron getting the funds to support his lifestyle?” Her Knight cut her off tersely. “You saw his mansion. You saw the things inside of it.”

Bezel had, and she’d put it out of her mind, too blinded by her own preconceived notions about how the nobility she knew of always lived. To her, it hadn’t seemed out of place. And yet now, at her knight’s urging, she saw a different picture. 

Dining utensils of silver; polished, but not aged, recently made. Recently upholstered furniture and a carpet in the main parlor by the fireplace which showed no signs of soot...or frequent washings. 

Added to the servants he clearly didn’t care much for, and it didn’t paint a very flattering picture at all. 

“I suppose we had better have a look around, then.” Bezel breathed out, moving to walk a little closer at his side. They were coming up on the local garrison of mage knights a few blocks away, and that would likely be a good place to start as anywhere else.

The sound of a powerful explosion in the direction of the garrison, followed shortly after by screams, had Bezel cursing that she had left her Arocan staff behind. Her Knight wasted no time in drawing his sword.

“You’re coming along with me, aren’t you?” He asked her, sighing once.

Bezel answered by running ahead of him and forcing him to catch up.

 

***

 

After the murders in Banali City, after the news of the ‘Code Violet’ incident in Zolim, after the earth-shake and the search and rescue that she and her Knight had participated in at Dapana, Bezel had thought she had seen the worst that Terra could throw at her. It was clear that it wasn’t the case a block later.

The screams she was, unfortunately, used to. People running away from the danger, she was also familiar with. But people openly attacking the mage knights? That was new. What was worse was that they were winning. 

As they raced through citizens going anywhere that wasn’t in the open fighting, the garrison finally came into view. Those in uniform were scattered, few and far between, and a force of attackers in nondescript leathers and hooded clothes meant to hide identities smashed into them and overwhelmed them, throwing smoke bombs that stung the air at a distance and striking with crude single-edged cudgels and clubs or daggers or staves and sickles and even a whip, which was  _ very _ effective in disarming troopers. 

“Stay close!” Her Knight commanded, and Bezel kept in tight behind him as he charged in, channeling power into his sword. One of the attackers met him with a red aura around a dagger and sickle wielded in tandem, and the clash of blades was ferocious and over too quickly. The Knight tore the sickle away with a twist and a yank of his blade, and while the man defended himself with his dagger, Bezel slammed him in the torso with a repulsion blast that knocked the wind out of him and dropped him hard to the ground. After his head hit the dirt, the fellow stopped moving, and they pressed on.

“Bloodless, Bezel?” The Knight asked, already sizing up the next opponent who closed in on them with a heavy staff as thick around as her forearm.

“Are we here to take lives or save them?” Bezel countered, and her Knight snorted once, but smiled and conceded the point with a shake of his head. The next warrior who came at them with a staff definitely knew his way around the weapon, and though he didn’t have an aura, the Knight found that his sword was unable to cut through it, in spite of the lack of a visible reinforcement spell. The shock of it allowed the man to land a hard kick into his gut, and the Knight fell back a few steps with a grunt, coming up just in time with a parry to keep from getting smashed in the face. Bezel moved to cut in with magic glowing around her hands, but the attacker, his face covered by a shroud with only his eyes visible, hurled out a small sachet at her feet, which hit the ground and exploded in noise and light that made her fall back, half-blinded and with her ears ringing. 

When she came back around again, the staff lay on the ground in front of her while her Knight smashed the pommel of his blade into the face of her attacker, clearly breaking his nose and sending him sprawling. Bezel grabbed for the staff and drew in a breath as she felt the heavy wood settle in her palm, and something along the weapon tried to bite into her. Like it was trying to  _ fight _ her magic. She hissed and dropped it, staring at the weapon in wonder. It was a problem, and a mystery, and she wished she had the time for it. 

But the Knight was picking her up right after, pulling her forward. “They’re pushing into the garrison building.” He told her. “Fighting them normally is taking too long. It’s time to put your skills to the test.”

She drew in a breath, but nodded. Her Knight had been training her not only in weapons, but in offensive magics as well. She had learned to adapt her style of suppressing a threat instead of killing it to a broader scope; for a situation just like this. 

They were racing through the compound and going for the main building when the front doors slammed open and every cloaked and masked attacker that had been  _ inside _ of the building came pouring out carrying bloody weapons and either escorting other exhausted and battered looking people in various states of dress or outright carrying them on their shoulders. 

A jailbreak? A  _ rescue? _ Was this what the attack on the garrison had been for?  There were too many of them to take on directly. Bezel brought up her aura and sucked in a breath, channeling her strength and firing it out as stunning blasts meant to overwhelm and subdue. Her aim wasn’t perfect, but more than a dozen of them collapsed after the shots either hit them directly or crashed next to them and went off in puffs of dust. 

The response was over a dozen more sachets being thrown in her direction, and she raised up a shield of glowing blue force streaked through with pink strands, expecting noise and light. Instead, when they hit, it was with the heavy whumps of piles of dust being unleashed on impact, and the clouds of fine particulates curled around her spell and…

She cried out as she felt it  _ eating _ at the spell, eating faster than she could reinforce it, and some of it got through. She breathed it in before she could stop herself and immediately felt dizzy, unable to concentrate. She coughed it out and stumbled away, but the damage was done; her mind felt foggy, and she couldn’t concentrate enough to conjure up anything else. Her magic slipped away from her. She heard the roar of her Knight, angry and protective as two more of the able-bodied attackers closed in and met him head-on. One was armed with simple weapons, but the other wore no mask, his dark-haired and rugged features on full display. He wielded an older, ornate, and very functional sword with manaweave channels forged into it, the sword of a mage knight, and his aura glowed a faded green, with faint traces of yellow light within. He had the Knight beat out in age by four or five years or so at a first glance, and seemed very skilled. Not skilled enough to best her Knight on his own, but working with his partner, he was keeping him at bay. 

“My, you’re new.” The swordsman taunted her Knight, his bladework nowhere near as fast, but grounded in technique and form. “Has Gobeas finally sprung for decent help?”

“You’re just one for bad luck, I’m afraid.” Her Knight snapped back. “To attack my fellow mage knights while I’m in town. You think you can get away with attacking innocents, you murderer?”

“Innocents? You think these  _ monsters _ are  _ innocents?!” _ The swordsman’s cocky grin disappeared in an instant as he growled in response and started fighting harder, pushing her Knight back with punishing blows that sought every momentary weakness in his stance. He sucked in air and fought harder, but the swordsman never went for the kill, even though he started striking out with his fist and his boot to land bruises and painful reminders. It was dirty fighting, and for as skilled as her Knight was, it was clear that the swordsman, while not  _ quite _ his equal in raw magical strength, had learned harder lessons. And he was using them not to kill her Knight, or cripple him, but to slow him down and keep him from going after the rest of his allies.

The swordsman was delaying him, Bezel muzzily realized, and she tried again to reach for her magic. It still skittered away from her grasp. She could only watch as the others of the swordsman’s party made for a pack of bridled horses nearby - actual  _ horses _ in the place of a skyskiff or a driftwagon. They climbed aboard, helping the injured to get seated behind them or in front of them as it allowed, and then they turned around and rode off as another explosion ripped through the garrison, tearing a hangar adjacent to the main building apart in wild flames. One of the retreating brigands whistled loudly, and the swordsman fighting her Knight with his partner laughed and flashed a triumphant smile.

“Gain more bearing, foolish stripling. See me again when you’re worthy.” He whistled loudly as he pushed his aura out in a forceful blast that came too fast for her Knight to defend against, and he went tumbling end over end as the sharp thrust of the swordsman’s aura shoved him away. The Knight came up onto his feet in a crouch, sword ready to defend against a finishing blow, but instead the swordsman and his partner leapt onto two more horses that had answered his whistle. They turned around and fled off into the distance, leaving Bezel and her Knight alone in the burning ruins of the local mage knight garrison, the hangar and its skyskiffs utterly destroyed, making pursuit impossible.

Bezel came back up on her feet as her Knight came over, checking her over with worried eyes and probing fingers. “Are you hurt?”

“I’m...They did something. They did something to my magic.” Bezel said, wheezing as she choked out the last of the dust in her throat and tried again to summon up her aura. It stuttered and flickered, but without the threat of open combat, and the haze of the dust having been blown away by the wind, it finally responded. “Their weapons, they…”

“I know.” Her Knight growled, stowing his blade. “I should have been able to slice through their weapons easily. But they were somehow resistant. It was like striking with a blunted blade.”

Bezel turned around to look for the staff that she had tried and failed to pick up, keen to examine it for clues, and gawked to find it missing. In the confusion, someone had picked it up and disappeared. The trail, and the mystery of who they were and how they could resist Atlantean magic, had gone cold.

 

***

 

“They are criminals and outlaws, your highness.” The Baron was grim-faced and clearly restraining himself as they sat for dinner back in his mansion. Bezel risked a glance outside the dining room’s windows, taking note of the increased guard presence around his home. “The people who turned to theft and robbery and brigandry when the mines ran dry, and who sequester themselves in the wilderness. They have been a nuisance for a long time now, interfering with the policing of the province, but this is the first time that they have been so brazen, so  _ bold _ as to attack the main stronghold of the regional Mage Knights under my command in my capital city.”

“What were the casualties?”

“Two dead, my lady, and fourteen more injured or incapacitated.” the Baron tapped his flatware against his plate. “It would have been worse, if the day patrol hadn’t been out seeing to their duties.” He looked up, his eyes inquisitive. “And have you recovered, Princess Bezel? I was horrified to learn that you were out walking nearby and got caught up in it.”

She had done more than just being  _ nearby, _ but Bezel wasn’t about to advertise the fact she’d charged into combat alongside her Knight in hopes of quelling the violence. Nor was she going to expose her Knight to criticism for allowing it. “My protector performed his duties admirably. He was able to fend off many of their number who might have otherwise harmed me.”

“A knight worthy of his station, then.” Baron Roland Gobeas managed a weak smile and a nod to her Knight, who had been  _ allowed _ to join them at the dinner table at Bezel’s request as ‘reward’ for his heroic efforts. “You have the gratitude of all of Atlantis, sir knight. We could not bear to lose another ornament of the royal family...particularly one as beautiful as our fair princess.”

Her Knight’s jaw worked slowly as he nodded, not saying a word in reply. Bezel decided to cut back in, because after all she had seen, she had  _ questions. _

“Most of the attackers we saw were using simpler weapons; farm implements, sticks, and the like. But one of them who met my Knight head-on was carrying a  _ sword _ as his favored weapon, and he certainly knew how to use it.”

“He had a green aura flecked with yellow.” Her Knight added grimly. “I was surprised to meet someone so strong. Who is he, baron? A former mage knight who went rogue?”

“No.” The Baron shook his head. “The Mage Knights of Ganarus Province are loyal; they are loyal to  _ me. _ The man you encountered, did he have dark hair and a short-trimmed beard over severe features?” Bezel nodded, and the Baron swore and reached for his wineglass, holding it up as one of the servant moved forward to refill it. “I know of him, your highness. He is  _ not _ a mage knight, he is the leader of the renegade band that plagues my lands. His name is Danel, and in the countryside, where loyalties to Atlantis and to my office are more tenuous, he is also known as  _ The Wolf. _ He is not a man to be faced lightly. But I see now that perhaps I have been too lenient in my hunts for him.” The Baron took a deep drink of his wine and set the glass down, then clenched his hand into a fist. “The Wolf struck at the heart of Atlantis’s power in this region and got away unharmed, freeing all the imprisoned criminals and brigands that were being held in the cells below. He must not be allowed to do more than he already has. The Wolf must be brought to heel.”

Bezel kept her face calm. “I am sure my father will be pleased to hear that you are intent on restoring law and order to your lands, baron. How will you go about achieving this goal of capturing Danel The Wolf and bringing him to justice?”

“I do not intend on  _ arresting _ him, your highness.” Roland snapped. “No. He is a poisonous weed that I cannot let grow. It is my intention to hunt him down and kill him, before he is able to do here what occurred in Banali City.”

“Never again.” Her Knight growled, and the  _ anger _ in his voice surprised her. He so rarely got angry, and even then, it was controlled. When he had dueled for the right to train her, there had been fury, but he kept it behind his eyes, flashing and steady and measured. Now she looked at him, and it was like a wildfire that burned out of control.

But then again...Banali City had been where his mother had been killed. It may have come as a surprise in the face of his usual composure, but she could understand why this incident so incensed him.

 

“But you need not worry about it, your highness.” The Baron reassured her. “It is a local problem, and we shall handle it locally. There are many things, I am certain, of more importance to your father than the minor troubles of a minor province. For instance...I understand that you recently passed your 14th birthday.”

Bezel’s hand tightened around her dining utensil. “Yes.” She got out, setting the spoon back down again. Suddenly, the whipped dessert had lost its appeal.

Roland Gobeas smiled, wide and hopeful. “I know that many will be seeking you in the hopes of courting you in the fashion that a princess of the royal blood deserves. You are as fair and beautiful as you are wise and caring, and such are qualities much prized in a wife. I know that you are not in the habit of staying long in any one place as you tour the lands of The Below, but would it be forward of me to ask you to accompany me on an outing tomorrow? After today, I would dearly love to show you the finer qualities of my lands, and to wash away the unpleasantness of this dark affair with The Wolf and his band of rebellious brigands.”

Bezel drew in a measured breath, not moving, not daring to turn her head. She could  _ feel _ the eyes of her Knight on her, just as focused as Roland Gobeas’s were, but infinitely more intense. More heated.

“Are you certain that is wise?” Bezel asked diplomatically. “I doubt very much that the danger posed by your rogue elements will be quelled in the course of a single night, if they have been operating with growing impunity in your lands. An outing seems almost inappropriate when you have more important matters to be tending to.” 

Bezel had grown up sheltered and protected and pampered, but also powerless to control her own destiny, and her very first weapons, before her magic and before her training with her Knight and even before her growing talent in artifice had been her  _ words. _ And she desperately needed them now.

“Still, an outing does sound lovely. Perhaps I shall go on my own tomorrow, while you tend to the affairs of state and try to seek out this Wolf who so taxes you.”

“On your own?” The Baron sputtered. “But your highness, that is terribly improper! And imprudent! The danger…”

“Is not quite so severe, as I go nowhere without my protector at my side. He has been my steady companion for a year now, and I trust him with my life.” Bezel smiled, glowing with tranquility and genteel grace. She slipped her napkin out of her lap and dabbed the corner of her mouth with it. “Yes, I think that will do nicely. I thank you for the offer of your company, baron, but there is work that you must see to. I traveled the breadth of Aroca with only my protector beside me before I came north, and I will manage well enough now with the same. Besides. I am only 14, and there are years yet before I turn 17 and reach the age where I become marriageable. There is time enough for such outings. Later.”

She rose from her seat, and her Knight and the Baron both rose as well, as decorum dictated when someone of higher rank moved to adjourn. 

“As you wish...my lady.” The Baron answered, displeased with her answer, but unable to argue against it. Then Bezel turned and walked out, and her Knight followed three paces behind until they reached her quarters.

Her Knight shut her door and she sank into the settee at the foot of her bed.

“So. We leave tomorrow, then?” Her Knight asked her softly. 

Bezel nodded. “If we want answers, we will not find them here.” She looked up at him, staring into his perfect eyes of gray and storm-blue. “We need to know how they were able to disrupt my magic. We need to know why they are doing this.”

“They’re criminals and murderers.” Her Knight snapped. “They want death and desolation and chaos. That is why.”

Bezel looked at him, and for the first time, saw something in her Knight’s countenance that she did not find attractive. “Like the people of Zolim did?” She asked him lowly, and he winced, for he had told her about what The Liar had said. About how the people who summoned it had been driven to it out of desperation because of their suffering. “There is more going on here than we know. They are not just a problem, sir Knight. They are a symptom.”

She leaned back in the settee and went to remove her shoes. “We must find the cause.”

 

***

 

They left Khav behind the next morning, and made it a point to travel away from the capital before taking rooms at a larger village. The registry reported that Princess Bezel and her knight protector took adjacent rooms and settled in for an early night, and the parked skyskiff outside lent credence to the notion. 

When a young lady in a hooded cloak dressed in region-appropriate garb strolled out onto the streets carrying a satchel of her most precious belongings and a sturdy wooden staff of slightly unfamiliar wood slung over one shoulder, nobody batted an eye. That she was accompanied by a young man hefting several packages also went noticed and disregarded, though Bezel had to smile as they walked out of the town’s borders and ventured into the countryside. One of those packages was her Knight’s sword, wrapped loosely in burlap. It would take him only a second to draw it out if they were in danger.

It had been her Knight’s idea; he had a wonderful mind, though it turned in different directions than her own. More tactical. Less analytical.  _ “If The Wolf and his outlaws ride wild animals and disable perfectly good skyskiffs instead of stealing them, then it is possible they can do without the advancements of civilization we take for granted. And if that’s the case...then we’ll have better luck chasing him down in the wilderness than we will in any of the province’s larger towns or cities.” _

That it gave the two of them another precious chance to disappear, for her to be someone else than Princess Bezel Lantea, was an incidental but highly welcomed bonus. They faded away in the dead of night and put a hill between them and the village before making camp. While her Knight prepared dinner, Bezel set up their shelter and their bedrolls. She put them together, and after they had eaten and they prepared for bed, he froze at the arrangement. Bezel brushed by him and settled in, and a few moments later, he did what she had hoped he might. He joined her, and slipped in behind her and held her close. And he never said a word.

A morning’s worth of travel, after consulting their maps, led them in the direction of an impressive river that they had taken note of on the flight up.  _ “Everything needs water, Bezel. Plants. Animals. People.” _ Follow the water, he had said, and they would find people. And they did, although it was noon before they came across the first signs of fields being tended by farmers, and after speaking with the hands, mid-afternoon when they came up on a much smaller village in the area. It was so small that the houses weren’t even built out of proper materials, but were constructed with walls of packed mud and straw and earth and thatched roofs.

The language they spoke was different from Arocan. It was more guttural, the consonants were slurred. Even her Knight hadn’t heard it before, but there was something about it that was lyrical. They got by on stilted Atlantean, asking about Danel, which got many looks of confusion, but a few guarded expressions as well. Suspicion, but no hostility. Her Knight hadn’t drawn her sword and neither of them had manifested their magic openly in the presence of others, having no need for it.

They were in the home of the village elder, or at least the person in the small settlement that everyone else deferred to, drinking a smoky-flavored tea masked by wild clover honey and notes of cinnamon. The old woman, Sava, spoke better Atlantean than anyone else, and cackled as she talked with them.

“No, no wolves here, young ones.” She said in a thick accent. “Nothing to hunt, you see? Yes. We hear of Danel, but he not come here.”

Bezel sighed and nodded her head. “I see. What else have you heard?”

“Why you want  _ Dai Kuryak _ , hm?” Sava asked, squinting over her drink with an eye half-fogged over. Her eyesight had to be failing. “What you young people want with dangerous man? To join? To protect, as he does?”

“You think Danel is  _ protecting _ people?” Her Knight asked bitterly. 

“Wolf protects pack.” The old woman shrugged. “Is why they are dangerous. Wolf never fights alone.”

“Wait.” Bezel held up a hand, quelling her Knight from offering a sharp rebuttal to the old woman’s remarks. “You think Danel The Wolf is a...protector. Who is he trying to protect people from?”

Sava just stared at her, and for a moment Bezel flashed back to how one of her old tutors would always glower at her for asking a ‘stupid’ question. It was usually followed up by a short diatribe that left Bezel feeling humbled and inadequate. The elder didn’t do that. She merely sat silently and took another drink, and Bezel did the same. The elder seemed to think that the answer should be obvious to Bezel, and it was anything but.

But then the sound of a skyship roaring overhead, a bigger one, dominated the attention of everybody. It was followed by screams soon after, and the elder swore and put down her cup, standing up faster than she had done before.

“You. Stay.  _ Hide.” _ Sava hissed.  

“What?” Bezel gasped, paling as she kept hearing the screams from outside. “What’s going on? Are we under attack?”

“It’s The Wolf, isn’t it?” Her Knight snapped, and Sava glared at him.

“You know nothing, boy.” And then she hobbled out of her house, leaving them alone.

Bezel shivered as the screams from the outside picked up in volume, punctuated by angry shouts and wicked laughter. The new voices prickled at the back of her mind, and it was a few seconds before she sussed out why. 

They were speaking in Atlantean. 

“It’s not Danel.” She said, and by the way her Knight had his head cocked so one ear was towards the closed door, he was hearing the same things she was.

“No.” He finally admitted. “It’s not.” And he exhaled and reached to the wrapped burlap in his possessions and drew out his sword. “Stay inside, princess. I’ll see what’s going on”

Bezel hated that idea. “If you think that I’m going to  _ let you _ run off on your own…”

“That is exactly what you’re going to let me do.” He cut her off. “Something odd is going on. I’m not putting you in harm’s way.” Then he was gone as well, leaving Bezel to seethe and clutch at her staff and twist it in her hands. 

She lasted for all of a minute before the sounds of conflict outside and her own nerves got the better of her, and she slung her satchel crossways over her body and pulled her hood up tighter over her head. Bezel raced out into the night, braced for trouble. She found chaos and brutality instead.

_ Mage knights _ were attacking the village, and they seemed to be scooping up the inhabitants with indiscriminate attention. Her Knight was engaged with four of them, holding his own in spite of his lack of armor. But there were still a half dozen who were dragging people out of their homes and either subduing them with magic or knocking them unconscious with vicious blows to the head before hustling them towards a landed skybarge, a larger aerial transport used by Atlantis. And overseeing it all was a snarling mage knight in the uniform of an RRD officer with a unit insignia she didn’t recognize.

“Let’s hurry this up, we’ve got a quota to meet!” The man snapped, and Bezel’s blood boiled. Quotas? Kidnapping people? Who were these mage knights? Were they impostors? “And  _ somebody _ kill that green-aura bastard, he stole one of our swords!”

No. Bezel gripped her staff so hard that her hands creaked. No, he had  _ earned _ that sword. He had faced terrors they’d never seen before. And whoever these people were…

They were nothing like Sloane. They were nothing like her Knight. They brought pain and terror and suffering, and she would not stand for it.

She felt someone coming up from behind her and spun around with her staff in a basic strike, infusing the durable wood at the last moment with a concussive spell. Sure enough, another mage knight had noticed her and tried to close in while she had been distracted, and used his armored greave to block the strike with his forearm. He hadn’t anticipated the spell, hadn’t anticipated the  _ strength _ of her blue aura, and the blow when the spell detonated snapped the staff back with recoil and sent him  _ flying _ into the side of Elder Sava’s hut, likely with a broken arm. 

It had the intended effect of silencing the screams and the shouted orders for a precious moment, with every traitorous Mage Knight and more than a few of the villagers turning to look at the girl in the hood who had dispatched an attacker in a single swing. Bezel felt the moment stretch like silk over a sharpened blade, slowly falling and just waiting to be cut.  

She cut it before anyone else could, letting her blue aura burn bright and channeling her power into her free hand. “You will not  _ touch _ these people, or harm them ever again!” And she fired off a full salvo of Repulsion Blasts, aiming for the most exposed of the corrupt knights. Most of them hit, with only a few getting up a shield in time to spare themselves the worst of it. Her Knight, ever adaptable, used the distraction to gut one of the fools and disarm, in the literal sense, a second of the four attackers who had squared off against him.

The fight lost all sense of reason after that. Utterly panicked in the face of a  _ blue _ aura, the madmen dressed as knights stopped worrying about capturing people and came after her in full force. Rushing her en-masse and firing bolts of magic all the while, they forced her on the defensive and prevented her from launching off any more attacks of her own. Armed and armored, they crowded in around her with swords glowing hot with cutting enchantments of yellow, and their commander’s blade was a wicked green.

“You bitch.” The man snarled. “How the hell were these barbarians able to hide a  _ Blue _ from us?!” Bezel’s staff swung about in tight circles as she batted their blades away and weaved clear of the ones that she could avoid outright. The pressure of the fight was like nothing she’d ever experienced before; all of her training with her Knight had been one on one, and he found herself gasping for air as her muscles and her head burned from the drain of both physical and magical combat. And she kept hearing screaming the entire time. She thought it was her attackers’ screams at first, but to a one, their jaws were either clamped shut in glares or kept in soundless snarls. Then she thought it was her own screams, but they were too deep, too masculine.

It wasn’t until one of her attackers spun around and dashed to intercept her Knight that she realized  _ he _ had been the one screaming. 

One of the knights that had been attacking the village finally got past her defenses with a lucky strike that threatened to either stab her through the face or to behead her, and she jerked away on reflex. The sword caught the edge of her hood and tugged on it a bit before slicing clean through it, and her head and her hair were exposed for all to see. 

“Oh, you’re a pretty one, ain’t ya?” One of the knights finally sneered. “Pretty and powerful. Might be the commander decides to keep you for hisself instead of sending you on like the rest!” 

“NO!” Her Knight screamed, and his aura blazed high enough that she  _ felt _ it through her exhaustion, felt him rage as he tore into his opponent and the other knight bellowed in agony.

He was fighting so hard for her, to save her. His panic and the sickening words of the knight were enough to break something inside of her.

For just the span of a heartbeat, her blue aura intensified and pulsed a wild pink. She threw it out away from her in an explosion of force that knocked every one of her opponents backwards. Their armor, their shields were torn to shreds as she howled from the wild attack, and they collapsed on the ground bleeding and unconscious, some of them possibly dying.

But their leader, the knight with the green aura, held on, buckled down on one knee and bleeding from wild cuts along his face that a hastily erected shield hadn’t been able to fully defend against. There was no mercy in his eyes, and no rage, and it stunned her. His eyes were dead, devoid of even a trace of sick pleasure. He rose up and gripped his sword, and his aura flared.

A speed enhancement. He was going to charge her down and end her, and she didn’t have the time to…

And then her Knight was there, standing in front of her as the blur of him raced to follow and swinging his sword with another howl. It was over in a moment, and the other knight’s head flew clean off of his shoulders. The rest of him collapsed to the ground a moment later, leaking blood from the stump of his neck into the soil. It wasn’t her attacker’s blood that had Bezel frozen in place, though.

It was the blood dripping down the sword that had run her Knight clean through, pouring from his back in a steady trickle.

“No!” Bezel screamed, and rushed to his side right as he started to crumple. This couldn’t be happening, not now, not here. He had survived a Code Violet, he had taken on the best of the royal knights and made it look like child’s play. Her hands came around him, not stopping him from falling, but keeping him on his side so the sword through his chest wouldn’t be disturbed any further. Bright red blood, frothy and aerated, coated his lips.

“You stupid, stupid,  _ stupid _ man…” Bezel tried to bite back a sob and failed. “Why…”

“M’life...yours.” Her Knight wheezed, and he somehow smiled, which only made her cry harder.

The shouting of the villagers returned as they raced back with farm implements, killing off the unconscious or dying soldiers one after the other, sparing nobody that had tried to attack the village and kidnap them all. Bezel could hear them, but she didn’t look up, and didn’t look away.

“Don’t do this.” She pleaded with him. “Don’t leave me. Don’t make me do this alone!” She grabbed at his hand, squeezed his gloved fingers tight.

The squeeze he offered in return was so weak that she barely felt it. “I love you.” He got out, and closed his eyes. Bezel shattered. 

Then she felt rough, ageworn hands pulling her away from him, and the sharp voice of Elder Sava yelling in her ear. 

_ “Move, _ stupid girl! He not dead yet! MOVE!” Somehow, Bezel did as the old woman commanded, and Sava pressed wrinkled hands against her Knight, one on his chest and the other on his back, and sucked in a long breath of air before conjuring up an orange aura and shoving it into him. A spell of healing. 

“When I say, you pull sword.” Sava huffed, the spellwork taking a toll on her. The bleeding was slowing down from its rapid pace, and Bezel struggled to breathe as she wrapped her hand around the hilt of the blade sticking out of his chest. This wasn’t the end. This wasn’t. He had to live.

“Now!” Sava shouted, and Bezel  _ pulled _ with everything she had. The ensorceled steel slid out of him, and then Sava was shoving thick wads of cloth into the sucking wound. 

She finished and sighed. “He live, for now. But he need better healer. He need  _ Ama Yagi.” _

That name dropped like a stone in a calm pond, and the ripples of it spread outwards as the other villagers echoed it in reverent whispers. Tired, emotionally exhausted, still fearing for the life of her love, Bezel knew that somehow it was important. She just didn’t have the capacity to deal with it. 

The villagers set fire to the skybarge and the now dead knights, which they piled up like cordwood along the ship. They loaded up their belongings and themselves into horse-drawn wagons and became a caravan which set out deeper into the wilderness of the steppe in the shadow of the mountains. 

Bezel rode in the lead wagon with Elder Sava, the old woman clucking and prodding at her injured knight with a low-grade healing spell every so often to try and keep him stable. He remained pale, shallowly breathing. Bezel sat beside him, with her staff and his sword and the sword that had almost killed him lying behind her as she stroked his hair and prayed for him to hold on.

_ I love you.  _ His last words rang in her ears. They haunted her, and they had been perfect, as perfect as she thought they would sound. 

It terrified her to think that he might never wake up, and that she could never say them back.

 

***

 

It took them hours to get to wherever they were going, and it was the dead of night when they arrived. Bezel hadn’t paid any attention to their course, or in trying to mark terrain features. Everything she had left to concentrate with was focused on the young man who meant more to her than almost anything. The wagon finally came to a stop and Bezel finally looked up from where she had been sitting and staring at her Knight, running a hand through his hair while she used her strange ‘lifesight’ spell, rough as it was, to keep tabs on him. The spark of life in him, or at least what seemed like a spark of life, clung on like a dim ember. Never shining any brighter, but never extinguishing either.

The voices outside grew louder, and she cancelled her spell and looked up just before the flap of canvas over the wagon’s rear entry was pulled back. A pair of older men rattled off a question in their native tongue. Elder Sava answered back, and then reverted to Atlantean for Bezel’s benefit. “They take him to  _ Ama Yagi’s _ hut. You go with. I see to my people.”

“Yes.” Bezel nodded and whispered. “Thank you.” She hunkered to the side of the wagon as the men came inside and grabbed the stretcher that her Knight had been laid down on, then followed after them with her staff and the two swords in one arm, pulling her cloak and torn hood tighter around herself with the other as a chilly wind blew across their path. She was able to get her first good look around, and was surprised to see no permanent structures at all. Instead, circular tents braced up on wooden stilts were dotted around what looked like a campsite meant to be torn down and moved in minutes. Most were small, only a little bit bigger than the tent that she and her Knight used in their travels. The one they were walking her wounded heart towards was the largest of all of them, easily the size of a proper Arocan house, and there was a woman with gray hair streaked with brown that emerged from inside of it, dressed in layers of green and red and gray cloth. She frowned at their approach, and gave Bezel’s Knight a glance at a distance before fixing her gaze to the girl trailing after him, pinning Bezel to the spot for a heartbeat. 

If this was Ama Yagi…

 

“You, girl.” The woman shouted out, crisp and authoritative and in no mood for pleasantries. “Better come along, I don’t think your lover will survive the night if we don’t see to his wounds.” She should have blushed madly at being called his  _ lover, _ but she was too tired and too worried to care or contradict the woman. Bezel walked up after the men bearing the stretcher, and the woman came in after her. Bezel left her staff and the rest of the weapons beside the door, then went over to stay within arm’s reach of her unconscious Knight.

The men and the middle-aged woman with the graying hair yammered on at each other in the coarse language they shared, with the men throwing in gestures as well. It was enough that Bezel was able to suss out that they were trying to explain the nature of his injuries, as well as how he’d gotten them. She nodded and waved them off, and then Bezel was alone with her.

Bezel swallowed. “Are you Ama Yagi?” She asked.

The older woman narrowed her eyes and mustered a faint smile. “Some call me that.” She answered, and Bezel took note of her barely accented Atlantean.  _ “Ama _ means ‘mother’ in our language. I am Yagi Rusla. They call me that because they see me as mother to all of them.”

“All of who?”

“The  _ Ganarusa _ .” The woman explained, and turned her attention to the young man bleeding on a bench that stood at waist height. “Which includes Elder Sava and those of her village. You have my thanks for what the two of you did to save them.”

“Can you save him?”

“Yes.” Yagi tore open his shirt to better examine the wound and hissed lowly. “Clean through. Speared his lung.” Her hands glowed yellow as she felt around the edges of the cloth packed into the wound, and she sighed in frustration. “Sava’s usual work, I see. Lovely.” She stepped back away and began to remove her outer vestments. “Any chance you know healing magic as well as whatever tricks you used to fight off the knights who came for the village?”

Bezel didn’t, and something in her expression must have tipped the old woman off, because Yagi scowled again. “Right. Why would they bother teaching a princess how to do anything else but  _ destroy _ things?” She muttered to herself, walking over to a shelf and grabbing one jar after another, stocking them into the crook of her arm. Bezel’s head descended into ringing at her so casually uttered words. Words of what she really was.

She was still gaping as Yagi returned to the side of her knight, and the woman had to yell at her to get her to snap back into focus. “You need to  _ concentrate, _ girl!”

“You know who I am?” Bezel whispered faintly.

“I have eyes, don’t I?” Yagi sighed, shoving a few of the jars into her hands. “Red hair? Blue aura? And the services of a mage knight as your personal protector?” She glanced pointedly to the weapons stacked by the door, gesturing with her flinty gaze. “And yes, I’m  _ sure _ you have a good explanation for why you’re all the way out here, in Below, barely supervised and traveling in disguise. I don’t care to be lied to right now, so I’ll save us both the headaches by not asking about it. Now, Sava’s healing has kept him stabilized, but your friend here is in horrible shape.”

“All the royal healers are Greens.” Bezel pointed out. “You’re just a Yellow.” She felt right to be concerned at that; The most serious injuries took a significant amount of power. More than Yagi possessed. If only she could do it herself! “How can you save his life?”

Yagi just snorted. “How much you have all forgotten, living up on that damn island in the sky. You can throw power at an injury and brute-force it to recovery, yes; that’s how they teach it.” She conjured up her yellow aura around her hand and popped the lid off one of her small jars, which smelled of bitter leaves and pungent alcohol. She dipped her hand in it, then brought it back up and quickly scrubbed her hands together until they stank of it, then reached for the packed linens tucked into his chest. The other hand she used to reach underneath him and lift him up away from the bench slightly, and Bezel drew in a breath as Yagi pulled the bloody bandages out of his chest and carelessly threw them in the direction of her firepit. The linens hit the fire and started to smoulder, and would be burning away to nothing soon enough.

Then Yagi jammed her hand into the wound, and even unconscious, Bezel’s Knight let out a soft groan and shifted. Yagi paid his discomfort no mind, and instead made her entire arm and her hand glow even brighter. 

“But why work harder than you need to?” She snipped. “What do you need for a healing spell, girl?”

“Uh.” Bezel blinked, trying not to faint at the sight of her Knight squirming in his sleep because of a woman’s  _ hand _ shoved into his chest. “The same as any other Working. Will and a Focus and Intent.”

_ “Intent.” _ Yagi growled out, and Bezel flinched. “Your  _ Intent _ guides your magic. Your  _ Intent _ is everything.”

“I...Isn’t Will the most important?” Bezel asked, for that was always what she had been taught. That your power was a reflection of your Will, and your control over it. 

And yet as Yagi stood there, snorting again like she was some addle-brained delinquent at her lessons, she was reminded of something that her Knight had said to her once, back when he had taught her how to rechannel the strength of an incineration wave into a Repulsion Blast. 

_ It’s your intent that keeps tripping you up. _

 

“Will.” Yagi breathed in and out slowly, not looking at Bezel. Her concentration and her eyes were focused on the patient under her arms. “As though one could ever put a leash on the world. Or should want to. Do you ever control a river when you dip your hands into it to drink the water? Can you keep it from flowing? If you throw yourself in its path, can you make it turn around and flow upstream?” She was slowly pulling her hand back out of the Knight’s chest, ever so slowly, and it took Bezel a look every half a minute or so to realize that she was actually moving it. “No. Intent. Always intent. Everyone fails at  _ Intent.” _ She jerked her head slightly in a beckoning motion, and Bezel drifted over to her side, looking down as she worked. 

“When you heal someone, what are you doing?” Yagi asked Bezel, softer than her curt remarks had been. “Where does the power go?”

“It goes to the injury. It...it takes it away.”

“Sloppy.” Yagi muttered, her hands still glowing a brilliant, sunny yellow. “Does the magic replace what is lost? Can it become the tissue of his lung, the torn muscle, the savaged skin? No.” She pulled her hand out of the Knight, and held the wound’s edges apart so Bezel could see inside. 

Bezel saw...healed tissues. Undamaged tissues. Still a work in progress, but…

“How?” She whispered, looking up to Yagi in hope and wonder. 

Yagi smiled. “Intent.” The woman summarized it in one word. “You are ignorant, girl. Not stupid. You can learn this. As my  _ Ama _ taught me, as her  _ Ama _ taught her.”

“As you will teach your daughter?” 

Ama’s smile was a sad and broken thing, and her graying brown hair wavered around her face as she shook her head. “I have no daughter, and my son...it is beyond him. No. You will learn this. You and your knight protected my people. You will take this as my thanks.”

She took Bezel’s hand and dipped it into the bitter concoction of leaves and alcohol, then let go of it. “Rub your hands together, girl. Spread it everywhere. Every finger. Every wrinkle.” Bezel did so, and then with a look to Yagi Rusla to check for confirmation that was answered with a nod, she slipped her hand into the wound and hissed. To feel him like this...it felt so wrong.

“Intent.” Yagi Rusla said again, quietly. “Bring up your magic. Tell it not to burn, or to freeze, or to shock. Tell it not to explode or to grow hard. Let it be like water. Let it flow over the hurt.” Bezel took in a breath and did so, and her blue aura, streaked through with lines of pink, manifested to wakefulness. “The body wants to be whole. It wants to be healed. And it is always healing, always. You merely give it a push. Like a flower needing water. And then you give it the sun. You let it grow and recover. You give the body what it needs to heal, and you ask it to heal.”

“Ask?”

“We like to be asked.” Yagi told her. “More than we like being told.”

Bezel reached for her magic, and let Yagi’s rough lesson ring through her mind. She let her magic flow out of her, let it go into his wound, closed her eyes, and felt for it.

And she  _ asked. _

She didn’t know how long she was standing there over her Knight, trying to heal him, asking his body to take her power, to use it to heal. She only felt the constant asking run through her mind, and the pulse of her magic as it thrummed and lined up with his, and then she felt Yagi’s coarse hands pulling her away from him.

“Enough.” Ama Yagi rasped, and Bezel came to feeling lightheaded and worn out. “Enough, girl. He’s safe now.”

She looked down at him, and her green eyes went wide in wonder. He was breathing normally now, buried under sleep and still recovering, but the horrible injury that had run him clean through was little more than a faint, puckered scar on his chest. She felt underneath his back where Yagi had started, and she found the skin smooth to her touch.

“He’s…” Bezel swallowed, finding it hard to believe. But it had to be believed.

“He lives.” Yagi said sagely, and there was the start of a smile on her face as she nodded to Bezel. “Well done, your highness.”

Bezel wanted to believe her so readily, but she needed to know for sure. She pulled in a focusing breath of air, concentrated, and then opened her eyes, activating the Working she had used in Dapana so successfully.

Under her gaze, she saw the fire of his life burning away in his chest, tired but strong. The bonfire pulsed in time with his heartbeat and carried a faint sheen of green light with it. He lived. He would live. He would wake up tomorrow, and she…

Oh, she would  _ yell _ at him for being so stupidly self-sacrificing, and he would grimace and wither under it and she would probably feel horrible afterwards. But he would be alive to feel abashed, he would be alive for her to feel guilty about it. 

She let out a shaky laugh and pressed her hand to her mouth as her eyes teared up. And then she heard Yagi make a confused, startled little noise at her side, and turned to look at her.

Yagi stared at her like she had grown a second head. “What was that just now?”

“What was what?”

“That...that  _ spell _ you just did. I couldn’t sense all of it, but it...it felt like you were looking  _ inside _ of him.”

After being humbled over the older woman’s harsh education on the proper nature of effective healing magic, Bezel puffed up a little bit. “Something I started working on back in Aroca. I was looking for a way to examine magical leylines and flows of mana. I ended up coming up with...a  _ lifesight _ spell, I suppose.”

Yagi kept staring at her, and Bezel cocked her head to the side. “What?”

“You aren’t what I expected from royalty.”

Bezel sighed, because Knight Commander Sloane had said the same thing. So had every other person in The Below that she bothered to get to know and learn the name of. Everyone thought of the royal family as...Somehow, uncaring. Distant. Removed.

And Bezel could not bring herself to be any of those. She  _ preferred _ caring about people. 

“What will happen to Elder Sava and the other villagers?” She asked Yagi Rusla carefully. “They cannot go back home.”

“They will make a new one.” The woman said, reaching for the other jars and smearing a paste of honey and other ingredients over the Knight’s remaining scar. “The  _ Ganarusa _ endure. We are like our horses; we go where we may flourish. It is only the foreigners who do not know how to live at the pace of the land.”

“They look up to you.” Bezel said. “Are you a...a priestess? Or a chieftess that the Elders all look to?”

“I am an old woman who cares enough about her people to look after them and mend their hurts when I can. I didn’t ask for power and I do not  _ rule _ them.”

Bezel frowned at her carefully chosen words. “It does not mean that you are not a leader to them.”

Yagi Rusla smiled at that, a thin and enigmatic thing that left a trace of spice in the air as she finished dressing the Knight’s healing wound, pulled a blanket over him, and then went for her outer wrap again. 

“Leaders do not need power. They look after their people, and their people look after them.” She went over to her stove and set a pot of water over the hot metal grate. “Come. We will have tea before bed. You will need rest as much as he does.”

Bezel found her fatigue was thick enough to not argue the point, and she drank the clove and peppermint-flavored drink that was shoved into her hand out of politeness to their host. It spread a low-burning warmth through her all the way down her throat and radiated out from her stomach, and gladly fell into the bed of a straw mattress and furs that Yagi had some of her people set up for her in the corner. Bezel turned herself so she could look at her Knight, sleeping peacefully at last, and listened to the gentle cadence of his breathing.

As Yagi Rusla and her Knight slept away inside of the large circular tent that was the old woman’s home, Bezel cried a little more.

His last words haunted her, even now when she knew he would live to hear her answer to them.

_ I love you. _

“I love you too.” She whispered into her palm, pressed against her mouth to keep from shouting it. Tomorrow. Tomorrow, she would tell him that. Bezel closed her eyes and fell asleep, feeling safe at last.

 

***

 

Bezel was up before he was, and  _ Ama Yagi _ Rusla had been up before either of them. The old healer wasn’t in the tent when Bezel came to, but she found another pot of water on the stove, a premade packet of herbal remedy waiting next to the teacups and another  _ clearly marked _ sachet of tea leaves next to it with instructions to boil the remedy for her Knight and to  _ not mix them up.  _ Bezel thought that was eminently sensible, as tea might feel good, but it wouldn’t be of medicinal use to her Knight’s recovery. She saw to her morning constitutional behind a privacy curtain, then washed her hands in the bitter disinfectant Yagi had left out the night before before getting started. 

The smell of it ended up being what pulled him from his rest, and he made a groaning noise as he hoisted himself up onto his arms and looked around in obvious confusion. Bezel was at his side in seconds, and handed him the foul-smelling brew she’d just finished preparing.

“You’re not dead.” She told him, answering what she assumed would be his first question. “Drink this.”

“Is that a command, my lady?” He asked, trying for a smile and coming up with a wince instead.

Bezel drew in a measured breath and looked away from him as he took the mug, grimacing at the smell of it. “Don’t you dare make light of this. Not now.” He didn’t say anything else and drank his strange herbal tea, while Bezel drank her own full-bodied brew and tried not to think of how much she had oversteeped it. 

“Don’t.” She swallowed the hurt that word brought up, and forced herself to push on. “Don’t ever do that again.”

“Do what?”

“...Throw your life away like that again.”

“My life is  _ yours, _ Princess.” He insisted.

“If it is really mine, my Knight, then you will  _ stop trying to die for me and  _ **_start living for me!”_ ** She snapped, and her power flared out around her, giving her words an echo that rattled the air. Everything went blue tinged with pink, fluxing with a power that she could see her Knight struggling to draw a breath against, and she pulled her magic back inside of herself and turned away from him to hide the tears she felt stinging at her eyes. “Please. Don’t ever do that to me again. Don’t…”

He must have been feeling better, or he was at least able to struggle through it, because she heard the shuffle of his blanket, and then the sound of his feet on the floorboards, and then he was behind her, and his arms were pulling around her, pulling her in, holding her tight as she shivered and felt the warmth of his bare chest press against her through her dress. 

The way he buried his nose in her hair had her shivering. 

“Do you think I could stand by and watch as that  _ bastard _ slaughtered you?”

“No.” She managed lightly. “I know it’s your duty, but…”

His arms tightened around her waist. “You think that  _ anything _ I did, or  _ said _ when he ran me through was because of duty?”

Bezel’s heart pounded away furiously, and she made a noise low in her throat that she  _ tried _ to make sound like a negative response. All of him felt too real and too close and she was torn between trying to break away from him or turning around in his arms to pull his face down to kiss him until they couldn’t breathe. 

“Did you mean it?” She whispered, when she could hear something other than the blood rushing in her ears. “What - what you said when…”

He held her tighter for a moment, and then eased up so she could turn around and look at him. She lost herself in his storm-blue and gray eyes, which were dark and full of promise. “When?” He murmured, and didn’t flinch when her hand came up to his face. She traced the curve of his jaw, and he started to lean in…

And the flap of the tent opened up, and Ama Yagi came stomping in, scraping her feet on the coarse brush beside the entrance with a basket in her arms. She took one look at them, noting the Knight’s bare chest, and glowered at them.

“Considering you were all but dying on my doorstep when you got here last night, boy, you really have no business trying to seduce any girl. Much less one that’s  _ in my home.” _ Bezel squeaked and pulled out of his arms, blushing and trying to hide her face in her hands, and the older woman snorted once and shook her head. “Go and sit down, boy. Did you drink your remedy yet?”

“Some of it.” He answered, and Yagi scowled again.

“All of it, you foolish boy. All of it.” She insisted, pointing a bony finger at him. Bezel peeked at him between her fingers and watched him roll his eyes before moving back to his mug of foul-smelling drink and downing it as quickly as he could without breathing it in. 

The Knight looked around afterwards, and caught a homespun shirt that the woman threw at him from the basket. “Thanks.” He said, slipping it on. “Now. Who are you, where are we, and what in mana’s purpose did I just drink?”

“Ah.” Bezel spoke up. “This is Yagi Rusla, a wise woman and healer who lives on the steppe. This is her tent - ”

“Yurt, girl.” Ama Yagi interrupted her. “A  _ Yurt. _ A much more proper and homey thing than a tent.” She looked from Bezel to the Knight. “And you drank a remedy that I prepared when I woke up this morning, before either of you were moving. You were stabbed through, and very nearly died. If Elder Sava hadn’t managed even her stopgap solution, the princess here would be alone in the world.”

The way that his already pale face whitened was enough of a cue to make plain that the woman’s words had gotten through his thick skull. After that, she softened up some. “You saved my people. I would have saved you for that alone. The healing, we both did. But you are weak, and you need time to rest, and to recover.”

“The other villagers…” Her Knight started carefully.

“Safe.” She told him. “The knights sent after the village were dealt with, after you and the princess fought them back.”

Bezel knew that her Knight was one who was always quick to examine threats and seek the best means of dispatching them. She tensed up at the mention of her title, knowing he would react to it, and sure enough he turned himself at an angle towards Yagi, and his hands lowered down to reach for a sword that wasn’t there. Not that he couldn’t manifest one in a pinch. Yagi just seemed amused at his wariness.

“You know who she is?”

“Red hair. Travels with a mage knight in disguise. And I  _ have _ seen portraits of her. When she was younger.” The woman hummed. “But you can stop your growling, guard dog. She is in no danger here.” When he still didn’t move, the older woman let out a huff and threw her arms in the air, then rattled off something in her guttural native tongue that sounded disparaging before she reverted back to Atlantean. “Sit  _ down _ and stop barking at me. Honestly.” Yagi ran a hand through her hair and looked over to Bezel with a long-suffering humor. “What do you see in him that I don’t?”

The Knight sat down. Bezel blushed again. Yagi, perhaps feeling entitled due to the fact that it was  _ her home, _ made herself some tea and patiently waited the both of them out to say something.

Past the crushing weight of her Knight’s mortality revealed and her other worries, Bezel finally started to turn her mind towards other questions. 

“Why were those knights rounding up the villagers?” She asked Yagi. “One of them said something about a, a  _ ‘quota.’ _ A quota for what?”

Yagi sat down on one of her chairs, sipped at her tea, and stared into the fire of her cookstove. “I do not know.” She admitted. “But Elder Sava’s village is not the only one that has been attacked. Sometimes, the people are able to fight back. Other times, we hear nothing from them and our people only find the village empty when they check, days after the fact. This is the first time that the attack was repelled from the start.” She looked up at Bezel. “You did not travel into the countryside looking for missing villagers though, did you?”

“No.” Bezel admitted. For a moment, she contemplated if she should reveal the nature of their mission, but then she realized that Sava had known who they were looking for. That Sava had probably told Yagi exactly what they were doing. With a shrug, she told her the truth. “We were looking for clues of the whereabouts of Danel The Wolf. He led an attack on the knight garrison in Khav. Freed several prisoners and then took off running. And he...He was very skilled at disabling magic users.”

Yagi snorted at that. “You chase a wolf into his own territory? Risky.”

“Necessary.” Her Knight declared. “The last time some armed thugs decided to go around attacking district capitals, Bezel’s uncle and his entire family were all slaughtered. So was my mother. This Wolf is strong, and he needs to be put down.”

“Good luck, then.” Ama Yagi rolled her eyes. “You will get no help from any of the  _ Ganarusa.  _ The Wolf is a hero to our people.”

“He is trained in combat. He is  _ dangerous.” _

“As are you.” Yagi countered, staring down Bezel’s Knight. “Should you be hunted down like you wish to do to him? Or is it because he slipped the leash when you did not that makes you so angry with him?” 

The Knight had nothing to offer to that remark, and Yagi looked back over to Bezel. “You and your man can stay. I offer you bread and salt until he is recovered. You will be safe with us, both of you.” She went back to the basket she had brought in and started digging out wrapped packages of smoked meat and root vegetables. 

“Wait.” Bezel said, narrowing her eyes as she remembered what Elder Sava had said before everything went wrong. “Will we be allowed to move about your camp? Speak with the others?”

“You are a guest. Not a prisoner.” Yagi pointed out. “I would ask that your protector not do anything strenuous and spend more time in bed than out of it, though.” Bezel blinked at that and the woman just frowned at her, sensing the silent question and looking particularly unamused at it. “I will make sure that you have a proper and  _ separate _ bed for your guardian, princess. You are welcome to keep using the bedding you did last night.”

“You claim to be a woman trusted by her people, and you can speak the language of the locals easily.” Her Knight spoke up suddenly. “But you speak Atlantean fluidly, even when so many of the Ganarusians we have met struggled to do so. And you hold yourself as an educated woman.”

_ Ama _ Yagi Rusla raised an eyebrow and waited expectantly for him to come to the point, and he sighed. “Who are you, Yagi Rusla? Really?”

The gray and brown-haired woman smiled thinly at the question and kept quiet, clearly feeling no particular need to provide an answer so quickly to it. She seemed perfectly fine with holding onto her secrets, like so many of her people did.

It was humbling to Bezel, to see how much trust there was amongst the  _ Ganarusa. _ What Ama Yagi had implied short of outright declaring it was that she and her Knight were welcome to hobble around camp as they recuperated and speak to whoever they wished. They were welcome to speak to anyone they wanted, because  _ nobody _ would give them a straight answer to the questions that broached on sensitive topics.  

“You would do well to try and learn some  _ Ruscovy _ while you are here.” Yagi said thoughtfully. “Atlantean is  _ not _ a language our people find much reason to learn.”

“I learned how to speak Arocan. I can make the attempt here.” Bezel declared. “But you are a woman of many secrets.”

“As you are.” Yagi replied, clearly enjoying the exchange. She would have probably kept it up if the sounds of stampeding horses driving into the camp with reckless speed hadn’t distracted her. “Ah. So soon? He must have picked up your trail.” 

“Who? What trail?” The Knight demanded, looking to burst back into a full alert status. Yagi just looked at him sharply.

“You are under my protection, and you will follow my rules. Bring no violence to our home.” Bezel and her Knight had only seconds to try and sort out the mess of that warning before the yurt’s tent flap was torn open and a menacing figure with dark hair and a strange mixture of Ganarusan and Atlantean features came storming inside, a too familiar sword bouncing off of his hip. He had eyes only for Yagi Rusla and went right up to her, pulling the slightly smaller woman into his arms.

“Ama.” He said tenderly, hugging her tight. The graying woman sighed and patted him on the back.

“I am fine. We are all fine. You come racing in here without any manners at all, Danel, what if I had been with a patient?”

“You weren’t.” Danel grinned, and Yagi sighed and pointedly looked off to the side towards Bezel and her Knight. Danel followed her gaze and the relieved smile he had been wearing dropped clean off of his bearded face.

The murderous glare that her Knight sent to Danel made Bezel glad that their weapons were still waiting beside the entrance, and well out of reach. If he’d had his sword on him, she was certain he would have drawn it on Danel. 

Danel just stared back at them, letting go of Yagi and  moving to stand between her and them. That lasted up until Yagi sighed and slapped his arm, and stepped around him.

“Princess Bezel Lantea and her guardian. This is my son, Danel Rusla.”

Ama Yagi’s  _ son. _ Well. This was bound to be interesting.

 

***

 

_ Ama Yagi’s Village _

 

They passed the rest of the first day inside the older woman’s yurt with Bezel helping Yagi to make soup to replenish the strength of her Knight seething as he lay in bed. He had finally insisted on reclaiming his sword, even if he wasn’t quite in perfect shape to use it yet. The injury was repaired, but he had lost too much blood, and grew weak quickly. Danel had left after their awkward  _ second _ meeting and had not darkened his mother’s door since. And every time that Bezel or her Knight tried to ask about him, they were ignored. Not dismissed or frowned at or yelled at, but Yagi quickly and suddenly became a touch deaf every time that he was brought up. It made for an awkward night of sleeping, but they were safe nonetheless.

By the second day, Bezel was quickly suffering from cabin fever. She didn’t have to put on airs and slip on the mask of a royal princess like she had to on Atlantis and in the presence of other nobility, but being stuck in one room with a  _ very _ nosy chaperone keeping her from doing what she wanted to and saying what she wanted to was irritating nonetheless. Yagi must have felt it, because she finally told Bezel that it was time to continue her training in the healing arts and all but forced her out the door. Her Knight made a face, clearly wanting to escort her, but Bezel quelled that urge with a look and a silent wish for him to get better. He sank back onto the cot, cuddled in his blankets, and gripped his sword even tighter. 

Bezel and Yagi went from yurt to yurt, and she carried a smaller basket to the larger one that Yagi did.

“Magic can do much.” Yagi explained, as they treated a young boy who coughed wetly and looked miserable as he shivered under several furs, in spite of the roaring fire filling the small space with heat. “And if one forces themselves, they can heal a terrible wound all in one go, bring someone back from death’s door. But it should not be a talent used lightly. Or often, not to that degree.” She switched to Ruscovy and chattered something away to the boy’s mother, who answered in the same. Yagi hummed thoughtfully and went digging in her bag, then came up with a small glass phial of some sort of powder. She measured out an exact spoonful of it and reached for a shallow metal bowl, pouring it in and then filling it with hot water.

“His lungs are full of ill mucus. It is the fall sickness. The old and the young are more susceptible to it. We could burn it out of him in seconds if we wished to waste our power, but he is already weak, and it would make him weaker. Weak enough, perhaps, for the next round to take hold and overwhelm him. So, we will be gentler.”

“Gentler how?” Bezel asked. “Will you give him that to drink?”

Yagi laughed, a throaty noise full of warmth and amusement, and totally unlike any noise that the royal healers had ever made in Bezel’s presence before. “No, girl. Not to drink. We will turn it to steam and he will breathe it in. And while he does that, you get to learn a new trick; healing without healing.”

It sounded terribly confusing, and Yagi just smiled as she placed the metal bowl inside of a slightly larger wooden one and then heated it up with a touch and a careful application of magic until the water and the powder that had dissolved into it was boiling furiously. As Yagi held the steaming mixture under the boy’s head and he breathed in the wafting fumes of it into his infected lungs, she had Bezel press her hands to the boy’s back and use her magic in a different way entirely than she had with her Knight. Her hands warmed, and the skin beneath her fingers vibrated slightly as Yagi guided her through the process. The end result was that after five minutes of breathing in deeply and slowly as he could manage, the boy shivered and then started coughing up wet, viscous globs of thick yellow mucus into a spare bit of cloth Yagi had him hold up to his mouth. It went on for another fifteen minutes like that, with Bezel managing a spell where the problem was not running out of mana, but forcing herself to not _use_ _too much of it_ in spite of her impatience, and Yagi speaking words of encouragement in Ruscovy until finally, his coughs sounded nowhere near as wet, and color was finally returning to his cheeks.

“Good. Good. He is getting air into him, at last.” Yagi hummed, setting the now boiled dry bowl and its wooden coaster aside, and taking the cloth full of sick away from their patient. She examined it and then turned it around for Bezel and the boy to see. The boy made a noise of disgust, and yet leaned in for a closer look, and Yagi snorted. “Boys. Always so interested by disgusting things.” She rolled her eyes, and Bezel giggled. Yagi wrapped up the bundle and then dragged it over to the fire, using a stick to tuck it in deeply among the embers so it would dry and burn completely. “Now, girl. You need to say something to them. Repeat after me, very slowly.” And then Yagi spoke another phrase in Ruscovy, with a deliberate cadence through the syllables and the strange slurred consonants. 

Bezel shakily repeated it, and the boy and his mother both brightened up and smiled at them, and the boy even reached over and hugged her in the tight and awkward fashion that all children did. She patted his back gently and then looked over to Yagi. “What did I just tell him?”

“The only thing that matters to someone who is sick or hurting.” Yagi explained, and her smile this time had no hidden agenda or enigmatic mystery to it. “You are going to be okay.”

Stunned, Bezel worked her way through the syllables again, and demanded Yagi to test her on the walk over to the next yurt, this one full of refugees from Elder Sava’s village. That time around, she made it through the three patients they treated inside with flawless accuracy.  _ You are going to be okay. _

After their fifth house, Yagi sighed, smiled, and patted her on the shoulder. “You have a talent for delicate work, Bezel. In spite of your power.”

“How come Atlantis doesn’t learn healing magic like this?” Bezel asked the older woman, genuinely curious. “This works!”

Yagi thought about that for a moment, then gestured for Bezel to follow her, and they came closer to a river and a small copse of trees there. Yagi leaned up against one and made a gesture for Bezel to copy her, which the girl did.

“I have heard that the Mage Knights are...selective with their membership.” Yagi began carefully. “Is this so?”

“I think so.” Bezel nodded. “They only take mages whose auras are a Yellow or above. And there is no member of royalty whose aura isn’t Blue. My Knight’s aura is green, and that was a deciding factor in why he was recruited. That, and…” She paused, but Yagi just waited her out placidly before Bezel shook her head to dismiss the bad memories. “When my uncle and his family were murdered, he saved me. His mother died protecting us both, and he woke to his power and nearly died defending me.”

“How old were you?”

“I was 9. He was 10.”

“Hm. That early?” Yagi mused, smiling gently. “And has your magic always been...unusual?”

Bezel stiffened. “Unusual? In what way?”

“Elder Sava said that you knew how to fight a little, and that staff still sitting in my yurt speaks to it. But you do not have the bearing of a warrior, like I suspect your older brothers do. You seem...more a scholar.”

Bezel breathed. “Yes?” She said in a clipped tone. “If I answer your question, will you answer one of mine, Ama Yagi?”

The older woman laughed. “A secret for a secret, princess? Very well. You first.”

“Artificing.” Bezel surrendered the answer with a sigh. “I am talented in artificing and runecrafting. The enspelling of items. I made my first one when I was 9. It was a - a moving portrait.” And she blushed a little to think of it and who she had made it for, never thinking she would ever see him again. That her life would be so bound to his that he would become the most important person in it. Eager to not let Yagi pick at that detail and get her really blushing, she pressed on. “That’s one of the reasons that I’m down here on Terra. I’ve been trying to track the leylines around the world so I can design a magic capacitor.” She saw the curious look on Yagi’s face, and explained. “An enspelled item that can absorb mana flowing about freely in the currents and then hold it. If I can manage that, then I might be able to help those who have trouble with gathering power, or use it as a tool to help those who gather too much to control themselves more so their spells don’t become overpowered.”

Yagi stared at her after that, and Bezel made a face. “What?”

“You really are different, girl.” Yagi mused softly. “You said that’s  **one** of the reasons you came down here.”

Bezel narrowed her eyes. “That’s another question. I get one of mine now.” Yagi smirked and waved a hand in front of her, beckoning the girl to keep talking. “How is it you can speak Atlantean so fluently when few others among your people can?”

“My father taught me.” Yagi said, and Bezel realized that the woman meant to leave it at that, and glared at her. The woman rolled her eyes. “My father was the Steward of the late Baron Gobeas when he assumed the title.”

“Wait.” Bezel held up a hand, parsing that out. A Steward. She’d heard of the role, but most nobles she’d heard of preferred to rule directly without a second-in-command, someone closer to the population, to aid them. “The  _ former _ Baron Gobeas? As in, Roland’s father?”

“Yes.” Yagi nodded. “And my father trained me from when I was very young to take his place.” The old woman folded her arms. “Now. What other reasons brought you to the surface? What the island-dwellers call the Below with such scorn?”

“Officially?” The girl began. “It’s so my brother will have an advisor who actually knows what is going on in the rest of Terra, instead of some noble who will lie about things or speak in half-truths. And there are plenty of people to meet and help. There was an earth-shake in Aroca before we came up to Euros and Asa, and if I hadn’t been there to make the RRD division change their orders, nobody would have helped them. And it was touch and go in the rescue until I…”

“Until you what?”

“That’s another question. You get one next. You were the previous Baron Gobeas’s  _ Steward. _ Like your father was for his father, and for a while, for him.”

“Yes.” Yagi pulled away from the tree she’d been leaning against, done with her rest, and Bezel followed her. “I became the Steward for the province under Roland’s father, back when his mother was still alive. She died two years after I settled into the role.” She kept walking along, and if Bezel hadn’t been watching her like a hawk, the princess would have missed the memory of sadness and warmth that passed over the older woman’s face. “He loved her dearly, and losing her almost broke him. Roland was just five years old then. I believe he’s...twenty-six now?” She waved it off and pointed to their next house. “One more stop to make. My question next. What did you do during the rescue that had you hesitating?”

To Bezel, it had been a desperate act that worked wonders. “When I was examining my Knight, you had the strangest look on your face. Like you couldn’t figure out what I was doing.”

“Your  _ lifesight _ spell.” Yagi nodded. She looked to Bezel. “You used it there, too?”

“For a longer period of time. At a greater distance, and while looking at more than one target. I collapsed afterwards, but I could...I could  _ feel _ all the lives trapped in the rubble, and it helped us to dig them out more quickly. I was trying to look for mana, and I found I was watching life. And I still haven’t figured out  _ why _ my spell, meant for one thing, would fail so horribly and reach for something else.”

“The work you are doing, this research, nobody else could manage it.” Yagi told her. “Nobody else has even  _ thought _ of it. But you shouldn’t think too hard on it. Sometimes, answers come when you stop looking for them. And we still have another patient to see.”

“You care for them a great deal.”

“Steward or not, girl, I never stopped looking after my people.” Yagi said crisply, and picked up her speed. Bezel allowed herself to fall behind and think on something that revelation brought to mind, but which she didn’t dare expose herself to any further reciprocal questioning to see answered.

Baron Roland Gobeas had no Steward, at least from what Bezel had seen of his mansion during their short stay in Khav. 

It begged the question as to when Yagi Rusla had resigned her post and started living in the wilderness of the steppe as a healer and wise woman...and why.

 

***

 

The Knight continued to recover, confined to Yagi’s yurt on her orders and on Bezel’s wishes. The rounds of tending to the injured and ill had only taken them a few hours that second day, and for a portion of the rest of it, Bezel had sought to improve her Ruscovy first with Yagi until the old woman was tired, and then with Elder Sava, who was more than happy to walk her around, point to things and then give the proper term. By the time evening rolled around, Bezel felt confident in the basics of the language;  _ hello. How are you doing. Where does it hurt. You’re going to be okay. I am hungry. _

She was buzzing during dinner and a little stir-crazy from the energy she was hanging onto, so after the meal was consumed, she went outside of the yurt and sat on the steps, looking around the camp. It was all so much rougher in form than the settlements she was used to, and transient for all of the people that lived there. Yet as she listened to the laughter of children and songs being sung as they moved about the camp, there was a sense of peace and belonging that she hadn’t felt during their stay in Khav. It was the same sense of community she had felt in Dapana, and in the soup kitchen run by the Geenes, but without the tragedy. Even for the villagers who had been attacked by those rogue mage knights and had come here along with Bezel and her Knight and Elder Sava, there wasn’t that feeling of loss. Anger, yes. Resentment. Bitterness that stretched back beyond further than just three days ago. 

They were community, and they were together, and as long as they had that, they were happy.

Bezel reached for her power and called it up, letting it glow through her eyes as she looked around the transient village. She could see the sparkle of life in all of them as she rested there, the flickering candles of all the living  _ Ganarusa _ who congregated in their homes to stave off the chill of the bitter fall night. This time, though, she didn’t just see the light of their lives, burning bright and strong. She watched with sharper focus and more experience and thought she could see them oriented, like those living lights were turned in towards one another. The yurts, the fencing around the horse paddock, the land started to blur and fade away from her senses. The lights, the living creatures around her were all that were left.

She had been trying for a spell to let her see the flow of magic in the world, and ended up coming up with a spell that let her see the living things around her. It was, by all measures, a fluke of triumph in a failed experiment. Bezel had used it to save lives in disaster. It  _ meant _ something.

But it meant something else, too. She sat there, staring at those lights, sensing connection in them to other lights, and image began to blur and shift. The candle lights spread outward, becoming…She swore she could see the outlines of grass, of horses, and trees, and people. Dozens of people, and…

“Good evening your highness.” A voice greeted her, and Bezel startled and lost her grip on the spell, and it drifted away from her in a rough collapse, leaving her back in herself with the noises of life and the darkness of the night and the flickering light of the campfires all assaulting her senses.

She rubbed at her eyes with a soft hiss and looked up, meeting the amused expression of Yagi Rusla’s son, watching her.

Danel Rusla. Danel The Wolf. The man who had attacked Khav and the knight garrison there successfully, neutralized her power, and escaped laughing with an untold number of prisoners. 

And yet in the wake of her Knight’s almost fatal injury, she couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something more going on. 

“Come to check on your mother?”

“Yes, I did. I don’t get the chance to see her often, so the times that I can come to visit, I try to make the most of them.”

Bezel smiled. “She taught you Atlantean very well. You have less of an accent than Yagi does.”

“Yes, well.” Danel shrugged. “For a time, I learned under the former Baron also. He knew the importance of proper Atlantean.”

Bezel felt old questions bubbling up at that. “I met Roland, you know.”

There was a brief spark of utter rage and loathing which Danel quickly shifted into grim amusement. “Was he everything you hoped for in a regional lord?”

“No.” Bezel admitted. “The experience left me somewhat disappointed. And my Knight was suspicious of him.”

“He had good reason to be.” Danel nodded, pleased at the confession. “He is  _ nothing _ like m...like Marten Gobeas was. He abuses his people, mistreats them, values wealth and  _ objects _ over lives. And his corruption has been spreading. Mage Knights assigned to the province became crueler after his father died. At first, it was just harassment, higher taxes. But then people started going missing. And then villages.”

“Elder Sava’s village being attacked...there have been others?”

Danel was only four or perhaps five years older than she was, but the lines and healed wounds on his face spoke to suffering and hard living and harder fighting. “Too many.” He admitted bitterly. “My men and I are used to riding in afterwards and finding the villages burning and everyone missing or dead. What you and your protector did...it was the first time that we rode into a massacre where our own people were not the ones who had died. And what was left behind confirmed our fears. There was no reason for a skybarge that size, not unless they were taking everyone in Sava’s village and relocating them somewhere else. They’re taking them somewhere, and I have been racking my brains since I spoke with my mother and with Sava. I don’t know where they are going.”

Bezel absorbed that, and he waited for her to gather her thoughts. To offer a suggestion, perhaps. Or to wait for a question. Bezel always had so many questions.

“Why do they call you The Wolf?”

“A wolf is a pack animal.” Danel explained. “His strength is not in how well he fights on his own, but in how he fights with the others. The knights that Roland commands? They do not know the strength of unity. Not like my people do. The knights sit confident in their power, in their supremacy, and overlook the danger of the pack. There is strength in our bonds to one another. A strength that they forget. That Atlantis forgets.”

Bezel blinked, taken aback at the assertion. For a moment she blanked out, trying to think of what she had seen in her lifesight spell when he had interrupted her. She failed to Danel seemed amused.

“You have been training with my mother. She...she likes you, you know.”

“She is a good woman. She cares. She looks after them all.”

“My  _ Ama _ always did.” Danel smiled, coming closer and sitting on the steps next to her. He sighed as he settled into place. “Steward or no Steward, the title never mattered. She knew her duty, and I try to follow her example. But there is too much of my father in me. Too much of the warrior, and not enough of the healer. She has said that you will be even better than she is, in time.”

“I can’t stay, though. You know that. She must know that. Her place is here, but mine…”

“Is Atlantis?”

“No.” Bezel said, shaking her head softly. “More than here. More than there.”

Danel raised an eyebrow. “You would be Steward of the world?” He seemed confused at the idea, and Bezel looked away from him, blushing a little. 

“There are enough people who want to rule Terra. There aren’t enough who want to take care of it.” She said. Danel snorted in agreement at that, and Bezel looked over at him.

Paused. And looked again. And froze. His eyes were his mother’s, but his hair, the line of his jaw, the way his face moved when he smiled sardonically…

Oh. Oh, it couldn’t be, but…

“Danel.” Bezel whispered, staring at him, unable to blink, unable to look away. “Who was your father?”

Danel looked back at her, eyes appraising. “If you ask with that much fear in your voice, I think you know already.” The younger man, younger than his  _ half-brother _ by 7 years, said in a far too calm voice. 

Bezel bit her lip. “Yagi loved the former Baron.”

“She loves him still.” Danel sighed. “My mother was the woman who kept him together when his wife died, and he gave her the gift of my life. I think that is why Roland despises us, despises me. She loves this land and her people and taught my father Marten to care for them. Roland knows only the venom of it all. I could have forgiven him sending my  _ Ama _ and myself away after his father died. I will never forgive him for who he has become, and for what he does to our people now.”

“You think he is behind it all?”

“Who stands to benefit the most?” Danel pressed her, and stood back up with an angry grunt. “If I could learn where he was taking my people, I could stop it and expose him. But he does not hide them in Khav, or in the villages he controls.”

Bezel thought on it a bit more, dredging up every detail that Roland Gobeas had uttered during her thankfully short stay in his company.

 

Maybe it was because her brain was still shorting out from making a wild lateral connection that made so many things about this mess even a little bit clearer, but the answer screamed away at her in seconds.

“Do you and your men track the movements of the mage knights in the province?”

“Yes?” Danel blinked several times. “Why?”

“Roland Gobeas  _ insisted _ that the mines in the mountains had all given out, that there was nothing of value left in them.” Bezel explained as she walked herself through a longer, vocal explanation of what her mind had deduced so much faster. “Do ships still fly to them?”

Danel blinked even more after that. “I need to make inquiries.” He stated, and walked off at a brisk pace.

Bezel shivered and made to go back inside Ama Yagi’s yurt, where a warm room and a warm bed and her still recovering Knight were waiting for her. 

The night air was too full of dangerous, enervating thoughts to linger in it any further.

 

***

 

Three days after they had arrived, Bezel knew enough about healing to make Yagi Rusla start smiling more often and let her take the lead on minor cases. It remained a challenge to Bezel, and one that she suspected her brothers would always fail at. In healing, there was  _ nuance _ that the royal healers paid no attention to. A balance between taking away a wound completely and letting the body heal some of it, which Yagi explained as the difference between keeping them at the same level or letting the broken body grow stronger. And her command of Ruscovy, the language of the people who lived on the steppe, grew. She suspected it would take years of exposure and practice before she felt fluent in it, but what little she did know put the minds of the other villagers at ease, and made them smile. Many had been wary of her, in spite of what she and her Knight had done to save Elder Sava and her people. She was Atlantean, and a princess, and there was no hiding that when she had been exposed so openly. But the  _ Ganarusa _ started to look past that, to see, as her Knight had, the girl behind the role. They stopped seeing the princess, and saw the person she was.

Five days after they had arrived, her Knight was finally declared hale and hearty enough by Ama Yagi to resume his duties, and he spent two hours every day outside training with his blade to rebuild his strength and endurance. He guided Bezel through her own exercises after that, and sword and staff crossed with his kept calm and her mana blazing through the wood’s natural conduits to make it stronger and resist chipping. 

Seven days after they arrived, as Bezel and her Knight were working through another spar without magical spells or augmentations where she was finally putting him on the back foot, Danel The Wolf and his men rode back into camp with grim looks on their faces. Bezel hadn’t seen him since the night they had talked and the truth of his complicated heritage had come to light. His men came to a stop at the village’s edge and walked their horses in, greeting people as they came. Danel didn’t slow his horse or dismount, and instead rode right up to Ama Yagi’s yurt, and to them.

Her Knight stopped the spar and shifted to stand in front of her as Danel finally slowed and dismounted in a smooth motion before his horse had even come to a full stop. He smirked as he watched her Knight stand with sword held in both hands defensively.

“Put that thing away, boy, you’re in no danger from me.”

“It didn’t feel like that the last time we crossed swords.” Her Knight growled, and Bezel gasped to hear the heat of his rage. Danel just sighed and looked to Bezel. 

“I need to speak to my mother, and to the both of you as well. Is she inside?”

“She is.” Bezel nodded. “Some of the other villagers came back with a supply of tubers, and she’s pickling them with a few of the other women for the winter.”

“Good.” Danel said. “Pickling is something that will allow for a break. I have news that must be shared in private.”

Bezel’s sense of danger grew. “In that case, let us not waste time. You seemed in a hurry, it must be urgent.”

“Very.” Danel growled, and walked past them with green fire burning in his eyes. 

 

Inside of Yagi Rusla’s yurt, Danel wasted no time once the other women of the village were dismissed. He paced around a bit while his mother sat placidly, sipping her tea, and Bezel and her Knight sat on the edge of her bed. She reached for his hand and he held it tight, more for his own sake than hers, it seemed. 

“The princess here mentioned something that the baron had stated to her in earnest. That the province was poor, and that the mines had given out. That they were no longer used.” He began, looking to Bezel. “Was this true, mother?”

“Yes. Far as I knew.” Yagi answered, putting two fingers to her chin. “The mines were closed. The veins had given out, and to dig deeper would be to risk the collapse of the mountain.” She looked up grimly. “That has changed, then?”

“Yes.” Danel nodded. “Skyskiffs and skybarges flown by the mage knights of the province were observed my by scouts flying to one of the largest abandoned mines in the Wul, loaded, and then leaving flying much faster, their cargo gone. My men and I were able to intercept one skybarge on the way to the mine, and stop them from escaping. Another thirty-three of our people were saved, and we learned something disturbing when we went to interrogate the survivors.”

The Knight twitched, and Bezel gave him a warning look before she glanced back to Danel, motioning for him to continue.

“They are  _ selling them _ as  _ slaves. _ To who and to where, we do not know. The one who broke was just a mid-ranked officer, but he did confess that the scheme was known to the highest echelons of the leadership of the local mage knights. That they were the ones who had arranged it. And we know when that exchange will take place.”

“When?” Bezel heard herself ask woodenly. 

“Tomorrow night.” Danel said. “Which means I must leave, within three hours at the latest, if my men and I hope to intercept them and stop the sale. We stole the skybarge and their uniforms, and we will be taking the place of the unit we stopped. They are expecting a ‘shipment’ and I intend to sneak my own people in.”

“And why are we here then?” Bezel’s Knight asked suddenly. “Are you trying to recruit us?”

“I would not turn down the help.” Danel admitted, looking to him. “Even out here, we hear things. And the story of Bezel’s Knight, the only squire who survived the Zolim Incident is one that gave us all pause. I don’t know what you faced, that part was too classified even for rumors to deduce, and I don’t care to ask. I just know, based on that and on our duel, that you are a skilled warrior. And that we could use you.”

Her Knight wasn’t pleased by the idea in the slightest, Bezel knew, and she stood up and reached for her Knight’s arm.

“We need to talk about this, Danel. Can you excuse us for a few minutes?”

The outlaw resistance leader nodded. “My mother and I still need to go over a few last details. If we succeed, there will be a great many survivors that will need medical care and aid in resettling. And heads will roll for this treachery.”

Bezel had no doubt that Danel was perfectly serious in that claim. He could be caring and warm in his own way, but in what he had said of his mother, and what Yagi had said of her son, was also perfectly accurate as well. Danel was The Wolf, a man who defended his Pack and his tribe, and aspired to the role of guardian. He was no caretaker like his mother and his father and his mother’s father had been. To Danel, there was only one solution to this crisis.

Stop the selling of his people into bondage, discover where they were being sent, and unmask the bastards responsible for the sickening scheme. And spill as much blood as the cause of justice demanded, even though the thought made her nauseated. 

She walked herself and her companion outside, turned, and looked at him. He was angry, but resigned as well.

“You’re going to insist on coming with.” It wasn’t even a question. 

It made her smile. “You really do know me.”

“I know your heart.” He sighed. “You cannot look on suffering and turn away from it. You try to change it, to fix it, every time. But this is one time that I would ask you not to. This will be  _ dangerous. _ And I am not certain if we should go at all. If we can even trust him.”

“I am.” Bezel said, insistent. She knew Danel, and knew his mother. She knew the complicated web of family between them and Roland Gobeas’s late father Marten, and the current baron. They did what they did to protect their people, a people now in jeopardy, bound for a fate worse than death. “If you cannot trust  _ them, _ my Knight, when they took us in and saved your life and gave you a place to heal and regain your strength, then trust  _ me. _ Can you do that?”

His jaw clenched, and for a moment that lingered far too long, she wondered if he might actually say no. If this time, his hatred for the rabble rousers of Below would take over the better angels of his nature.

She watched him with hopeful eyes. “Danel has more reason than anyone to hate the baron, but he does not attack him. He fights to protect his people, just like the Mage Knights are supposed to. This isn’t Banali City, my Knight.” Her hand came over to his shoulder. “These people didn’t kill my uncle and his family. They didn’t kill your mother.”

He flinched, but still wavered. Her hand went to the front of his shirt, and she reached inside, bringing up the chain and the enspelled item on the end of it. The locket she had given him last year. Her fingers snapped it open, and the portrait of his mother glowed in the air between them.

**_“You’re so brave. Don’t ever stop being brave.”_ **

His hand closed around hers and closed the locket, silencing that precious voice and dispelling the haunting image.

“No fair.” He whispered, and pulled her to him before resting his face against her shoulder. “No fair.”

“You are my Knight.” She said, her body humming again from the closeness of him. “Your place is by my side.” 

He held her tighter at that. “You asked me something before we reached Khav. Do you remember it?”

She did, but found that she lacked the voice to repeat it. She had asked him what she could give to him in return for all he was, all he had done for her, all that he was to her.

“I have thought of something you can give me.” He went on. “A promise.”

She nodded her head, only a small squeak leaving her throat.

“Promise me that you will not go somewhere I cannot follow you.” He begged her. “Promise me that you will stay alive no matter what.”

She finally regained her voice as she pushed him back, looking at him through suddenly blurry eyes. “Why?” Bezel whispered. “Please, tell me why.”

His hand came up and cupped the side of her face, and his thumb traced her lips. “You know why.”

“Say it.” She begged him, and his face crumpled into grief. “Please.”

“Because I love you.” He confessed, and her heart swelled at the ache in his voice.

She kissed him then, hard and deep, and he groaned when he pulled her close again, stopping only when they separated to gasp for air. 

Bezel was crying, and found it the most wonderful thing to be doing in that moment. She had begged mana and fate for him to live, so she could answer him. She would not waste the opportunity.

“I love you too.” She whispered into his ear. His smile lit up her world more than the midday sun.

Soon, they would be going with Danel The Wolf and his pack to save the captured villagers of the  _ Ganarusa _ from captivity, from those who had forsworn their oaths of duty and protection for wicked ends.

They would do it together.

 

***

 

_ The Wul Mountain Range _

  
  


A skybarge marked with the emblem of the Mage Knights and flying a flag declaring it as belonging to the provincial forces sailed through the gray skies of the borderlands between Euros and Asa. It was a no-man’s land in Ganarus Province, overlooked by everyone because there was nothing of value to be dredged up out of the earth. There should have been nothing out here.

There was an entire camp, hidden from view from the ground but visible from the air on the southern side of one of the mountains, with ships and soldiers and tiny people scurrying about both outside, and constantly flowing more and more people into the mountain, into the shafts thought abandoned and empty.

Not quite so empty now. Not quite so abandoned. All of this was relayed to the people in the skybarge’s hold from the ones on deck, dressed in the uniforms and armor of other mage knights of the province. And this skybarge wasn’t quite so well maintained as the Atlantean units or the ones of the RRD; the provincial guard made do with what could be spared, or what was discarded and could be repaired. The people in the hold could hear the wind howling outside, feel the chill of the air seep through the boards that forced them to huddle close together.

Not that Bezel wouldn’t have huddled next to the young man next to her anyways. The fact that she was shivering, and not just from the cold, made it easier. Their hands were bound with rope in loose knots, and she leaned into his shoulder, feeling him lean back. A length of her hair came down in front of her eyes, and she blinked at the color.

Not red, not glowing like a fire like she was used to. Mottled, acorn brown. Dyed by Yagi Rusla’s magic to hide her most distinctive feature. For this, she could not be herself, she could only be another girl caught up and captured by the provincial knights. 

She spoke enough Ruscovy to make the deception plausible now. For his part, her Knight wasn’t wearing his armor, downgraded to the rough woolen homespun and animal hide that was commonly worn. His hair, like hers, had been treated in a poultice thick with Yagi’s magic, and the dark color had been replaced with a pale, sickly washed out blond. Yet Yagi’s warning hung between them. To not call on their magics, not until they were sure. Because their magic would melt the minor spell within the dyes she used. Their magic was the truth of them, and the truth melted Yagi’s illusions. Always. 

“Get ready.” One of Danel’s ‘wolves’ called down to them, and then they were out of time. 

“Don’t go where I can’t follow you.” Her Knight whispered to her.

“Don’t you dare do something stupid like die on me again.” She answered him, finding herself terrified as they reached the moment at last. He leaned over and brushed a kiss to her cheek, witnessed by the dozen other ‘captured’ men that Danel had set up as his main strike force. 

“You’d bring me back.” He said, conviction shining through his voice. “But I’ll try.” They went still as the skybarge rumbled, settling down on solid terrain.  And then the yelling and the grabbing and the stumbling along started.

Hoisted out of the hold, they were quick-marched down the skybarge’s boarding ramp and made to stand in a line for inspection as another bored mage knight gave them cursory once-overs and wrote tiny notes in a clipboard. Bezel’s eyes went to the less bored trio of knights who came up to meet with the ‘squad leader’ who was anything but. Though Danel’s training and poise, likely a byproduct of whatever training his father had given him, made him fit the part as well as the armor that had belonged to a dead man. 

The officer who led the greeting party didn’t offer a hand and kept his palm settled over the hilt of his sheathed sword as he met Danel. “You’re late.” He said imperiously. “Mind telling me why you’re a day overdue with your delivery, soldier?”

“The village we went after had packed up and cleared out by the time we got there. We decided to do a little foraging.” Danel shrugged. “It wouldn’t do to show up empty-handed, after all.”

The officer, a man in his thirties, made a too eager smile at that suggestion. “I like seeing initiative in you younger pups. It’s a good trait to cultivate. Well, let’s have a look and see who you’ve picked up.”

As he worked down the line, Bezel used the opportunity to get a better look at the camp and the environment around her. The landing yards were  _ enormous _ , much larger than a dozen skyskiffs or even a handful of skybarges would need all at once. Everything else was just as the disguised wolves up on the deck had told them. 

She’d meant to distract herself from what she was doing, but she’d done too good of a job. When the hand of the officer struck out and grabbed at her chin, she yelped aloud in surprise and tried to flinch away. It got her slapped for her trouble, and she crumpled to the ground with her jaw aching. The bastard had put the full force of his hand behind that blow. 

“Insolent peasant bitch! Get up, and don’t you  _ dare _ flinch away from me again!” The officer snarled, and Bezel’s arms trembled as she pushed herself up with her bound hands. He jerked her up the rest of the way, and she heard her Knight snarl, saw him twitch. She caught him in her gaze, and remembered to yell in Ruscovy, instead of Atlantean. Her Atlantean was too refined and perfect for a peasant girl from Ganarus to speak. 

_ “No! Don’t do it!” _ She snapped at him, and though his command of the language was far more rudimentary than her own limited exposure, it was enough to keep him from doing something he’d regret. 

One of the other knights escorting the officer laughed at that. “Oi, get a load of this one. He looked angry enough to spit fire, didn’t he? What do you suppose, big brother or a boyfriend?”

“There’s a difference with these savages?” The other one snorted, and the two laughed as the officer ignored them and gazed harder at Bezel, turning her face one way and then the other even as her bruised cheek kept burning. 

“Hmm. Yes.” He smiled, pleased with what he saw. Even disguised, Bezel must have appealed to him. “Quite lovely. They’ll like you. Perhaps I should see if we can just keep you around for ourselves instead…” He hummed, and Bezel’s eyes went wide as she realized what he was saying.

 

“Hands off the merchandise, soldier.” An older, sharper, and far more menacing voice cut in, and the hand around her jaw let go and jerked away from her like she had burned him. Bezel’s eyes swiveled over to the new presence, and she noted how everyone was cowed in the face of the man who had spoken. He also was dressed in the uniform of a local mage knight, but his rank insignia was that of a knight commander. He had sharply trimmed gray hair and cold brown eyes, and his body was thin and coiled like a spring, even with his arms tucked behind his back and his swords bouncing off of his hips and longcoat as he paced along casually. There was a menacing scar down the side of his cheek from some past injury that hadn’t healed right, and there wasn’t a mage knight in the camp who didn’t stand a little straighter when they saw him. 

This was the man in charge of this...this  _ operation, _ and every bit of Bezel’s slowly developing danger sense screamed at her that he would, and could, kill in an instant. His eyes were unlike any other set of eyes she’d ever seen.

She had seen warmth and compassion. She’d seen concern and anger. Even her brother’s sadistic streak could be reflected in his eyes when he smirked, and the brooding depths of her father’s irritation still made her shiver.

What Bezel felt from looking at the old and wiry knight commander was a sum total of  _ nothing. _ Like he was devoid of any normal emotion at all.

He scanned the line of fresh captured slaves, and when his gaze passed over Bezel, she shivered on instinct. “A little late, but some quality goods. We’ll be able to up our asking price with this lot. The Surgalans prefer the younger ones; they get more work out of them. And more pleasure.”

The lower-ranked officer who’d been manhandling Bezel made a face, and his superior’s eyes flickered over to him. “Problem, lieutenant?”

“Sorry, sir. Just get a little nauseous thinking about one of  _ them _ pawing over one of us like that.”

“After we sell the chattel, they’re no longer our concern.” The knight commander drawled. “Remember, this lot  _ isn’t _ worth your concern. They’re subhuman, after all. And they don’t go missed. There will always be more of these mud-crawlers to take their place.”

The way he said all those horrid things so casually stung at Bezel’s heart.

“Move them out, soldier.” He said, directing those cold eyes at Danel. “Our buyers will be arriving soon.”

Bezel and the rest were marched away from the compound’s yard and taken into the tunnels under the mountain, kept lit with magefires dotted on wall sconces and marched past a checkpoint, which gave them directions. Then they heard the sounds, the noises of suffering and panic, and worse, the silence of hopeless surrender. In cages filled with more shadows and darkness from the indirect lighting than clear visibility, she could see the outlines of other people of different sizes, men and women and  _ children _ either huddled together for comfort or curled up as far away from everyone else as they could get. She tried to meet their eyes as she passed by cage after cage that was dug into the wall and sealed with iron bars. Few did, and her heart ached for it. She would have cried, if she could afford to fall apart. These were her people, and they saw no future, no hope, and nothing but pain and suffering ahead of them.

Because this was what the poison of Atlantis’s supposed supremacy had led to. People who didn’t possess magic, or didn’t have enough of it being marginalized, being ostracized, being separated. Being seen as  _ less _ until it wasn’t just a matter of their value to society, but the worth of their very lives that the elites saw as an expendable commodity. Like they were livestock. 

It built up inside of her, a scream of rage and sorrow and endless hurt. She felt the pain of seeing the shelter that her Knight had taken her to that very first time multiplied a hundred times over. Every cage held a dozen people, crowded in until the smell became intolerable. The tunnels, curving and unsure things, held dozens of cages in uneven rows.

Hundreds of people.  _ Hundreds. _ And how many times had this happened? How many ‘shipments’ had been sent off? 

Sweet mana. Thousands. The number of the lost could number in the thousands. Or the tens of thousands.

She and her Knight were split off from the others who had been in the insertion team, with the older men being taken to a different cell while she and her lover were forced into one slightly less crowded, more cared for. It was full of young women and a few young men, all of them handsome in face and body. 

This, Bezel realized, represented the cream of the crop. And it wasn’t just full of  _ Ganarusa. _ She stared to see two dark-skinned Arocans, five fair-haired Eurosians, and even a dark-haired girl maybe one year older than she was with almond-shaped eyes in a slightly dirty and ornate robe she’d never seen the like of. An Asan. 

They were all on edge, all either crying or looking like they had nothing left. The language barrier had clearly been a factor, and as Bezel bit her lip, she cursed herself that she didn’t know more of the languages of Below. A lapse in her royal education, intentionally made by her tutors. Why would a princess ever need to speak with those who were beneath her? 

But they weren’t. Here, in this cell, they were all the same. 

Her Knight waited until the guards closed the door and walked off before speaking up, whispering into her ear. “I don’t know who the Surgalans are. I’ve never heard of that group of humans before. I don’t know where they’re taking these people. Tell me you activated the emergency beacon.”

She jumped a little, because she hadn’t, and his face went hard. “Trigger it. Now.” Even surrounded by this miserable sight, her Knight stayed focused on the mission. Perhaps because he had seen worse, dealt with worse. 

Even with her hands bound, she had been careful to place the emergency beacon that Knight Commander Sloane had given them before they left Aroca in a place that could be reached, so long as one knew where to look. She raised her hands up to the front of her dress and tried to slide her hands down to her small breasts, and to the beacon tucked in the binding around them. But she couldn’t manage the angle, not here, not when it counted, and she bit her lip.

“You have to take it.” She whispered back to him, and his eyes shot to hers with incredulity. An untempered blush filled his face, and she blushed as well. “With my life. With my heart.” She repeated, for that was what lay between them. She trusted him, utterly and completely. Even with this.

It didn’t stop the fluttering of her heart when his hands, cold from exposure to the chilly air, snaked down the front of her dress and his fingertips brushed the fabric covering her bosom. Nervousness made him fumble, and he apologized as he felt around the edges for the metallic token that should have been so easy to find. She shivered when his coarse fingertips brushed her hardened peak through the underbinding, and he froze in place, as though he had committed a terrible sin. She just smirked at him, and he let out a soft chuff, blushing even more before he finally found the token tucked carefully away. Then his cold hands and the warm token, warmed by her body, pulled out of her dress. He held it in his cupped hands between them, and Bezel reached a hand towards it, remembering what Sloane had said. About channeling power into it to activate it. 

If she used her full strength, it would echo around the world. But already she could feel the Working over her hair and her face strain at the edges as she felt for it. She couldn’t use it fully, and she frowned. 

Her Knight must have realized the problem, because his hands squeezed over hers, keeping the beacon held between them. “Together.” He whispered, and she nodded. 

Neither of them could use their full power, but they each fed a little of their strength into it, and the combination of a fraction of her magic and his...it felt like it was enough.

It would have to be enough. They could feel the spell inside of the beacon pulsing away, releasing a silent signal that couldn’t be picked up by any other mage knight division save for the 242nd under Sloane. They only division that they could trust.

Into that activated beacon, Bezel offered a prayer.  _ Please, please reach him. Please let him come in time. _

“Where?” The Knight rasped, and Bezel opened her eyes, realizing what he was asking. Where to put it again.

“Put it back.” She said to him, licking her lips. He swallowed loudly and did so, and this time they both shivered when his hands touched her again, and she sighed softly when his palms lingered, cupping her bosom. Remembering the feel of her. Like he would never touch her again.

“This isn’t the end.” She told him, raising her voice just enough so he couldn’t mistake the steel in her voice. He came back to himself, blinked, and nodded once before pulling his bound hands away from the inside of her dress. “We’re going to get through this. We’re going to be all right.”

“I know.” He got out, his voice a horse and raspy thing. He leaned forward and pressed his forehead to hers. “I know.”

“I love you.” She got out, and she saw his eyes snap open, looking at her in the darkness across the small gap between them. “I  _ love _ you.” Bezel repeated, fierce and possessive. 

He smiled again at that, wider than she’d ever seen him smile before. “Do you know what you do to me, when you say those words?”

Bezel thought she knew. But she could still be wrong. She could be wrong about so many things, she’d been wrong about the world and Below and Atlantis and the role of the Mage Knights.

She didn’t want to be wrong when it came to him. So she separated, gave him one last smile, and did the one thing that she knew was  _ right. _ She sought out the Arocans and knelt down beside them, and spoke the words they needed to hear, in their own language.

_ “You’re going to be all right.” _ Their heads snapped up at hearing a friendly voice speaking in their native tongue, and Bezel smiled at them for a long moment before looking over to the  _ Ganarusa _ prisoners, and she repeated the phrase that Ama Yagi had taught her. A phrase that came more fluently than anything else in the language. Then she said it one last time, in fluent Atlantean, keeping her voice low enough that it wouldn’t carry out of the cage. In a voice meant just for their ears.

Bezel could tell that they didn’t quite believe her. What reason would they have to believe her, really? When they were still in cages, still buried under a mountain, just waiting to be dragged out and sent off to who knew where?

She stood strong and proud, and steady. She would be their strength. 

These were her people, and she would protect them.

 

***

 

Two hours later, a new source of commotion came stumbling into the tunnels of slave cages, complete with angry shouting and stomping feet. Bezel and her Knight came to their feet while everyone else in their cage either stared blankly or turned away, not caring who was there. 

To Bezel’s shock, it was Baron Roland Gobeas who came storming into the tunnels looking like panic and thunder all in one, with the knight commander of the corrupt knights in the camp at his side.

“...absolute  _ chaos _ right now, and I have Atlantis and agents of the Rapid Response Divisions breathing down my neck!” Roland stammered, working himself into a high dudgeon. 

“Unfortunate.” The knight commander said blandly. “But not my problem. The sale has been scheduled, and it’s not as though we can exactly send our buyers a message to get here sooner. You should have kept the princess in check instead of allowing her to traipse all over.”

“As if there was any stopping her. If I’d insisted and forced the issue, she would have gotten suspicious.” The Baron muttered. “Right now, there are entire units of mage knights out there, combing every inch of my lands for her. The men we trust are ‘searching’ in this area, but eventually they  _ will _ get here. And your  _ buyers _ need to be gone by the time they do, Knight Commander Keral!”

For once, an emotion crossed the older knight’s face, something dangerously close to irritation. Bezel, partially hidden in the shadows of their cell found herself reaching for her Knight’s hand to keep herself from whimpering. 

“You knew the risks of this operation when you came to me and presented your idea. Providing political cover is  _ your _ responsibility, Gobeas, not mine.”

“That worked up until that bitch decided to wander off the map and get herself lost. Or killed.” The baron growled out. 

“So your seduction didn’t take? Pity. You pride yourself on your talent with women.” Keral replied coolly. “Or perhaps you only go after the unwilling ones who don’t have a choice in the matter. What would be a better outcome, Gobeas? If she showed up on the other side of your lands dead, or if she was never heard from again?”

“Is it possible that some of your men caught her up in one of their sweeps?” Gobeas asked eagerly. “If they killed her, I could blame it on Danel the Wolf and his outlaws…”

“My men have orders to  _ capture _ people for the slave trade, Baron, not to kill them.” Keral said, turning and looking into the cage that Bezel and her Knight inhabited. “And I think that the princess’s coloring is distinctive enough that they would notice it. To say nothing of her aura if she fought back. No, my men have not encountered the princess, so far as I have been made aware.” His cold eyes ran over the bodies of every person inside Bezel’s cage, as though measuring their value. “If they had, she would have ended up in here.” 

His hand shot up, and a bright green glow shot through with blue streaks illuminated the small space. Some of the others in the pen let out shrieks and turned away, and a globe of light that shifted to pale white as it detached from his hand flew into the space.

A True Light spell, an advanced Working that betrayed no hue of the caster’s aura when wielded. But it also made clear visual details that might have been shaded by lights of aura color. Like her hair.

Bezel didn’t breathe as she stared at the light, and found herself wincing from the pain. It took her a moment to realize that it was the pressure of her Knight’s hand squeezing down on hers, urging her to silence. To not give anything away. She didn’t dare look at the knight commander with the cold, calculating eyes, she just kept staring at the light and telling herself  _ My hair is brown, not red, I am disguised, you do not know me _ over and over again.

Many seconds later, the light spell faded away, and Bezel watched as Keral blinked again and swiveled to the Baron. “Not a single red-haired girl in there. And my men are trained too well to let a rare beauty like Bezel Lantea be shoved in the worker cages, even if they  _ hadn’t _ known who she was. No, it is far more likely that she’s dead, either at the hands of my men or your outlaw rebels.”

“That’s not good enough.” Roland was still sweating. “Not for a missing princess of the royal blood. They will tear my lands  _ apart _ looking for her until they find a body.”

Knight Commander Keral blinked again, and then stepped up next to Roland Gobeas, gently patting the younger man on the shoulder in consolation. “You’re right, of course. They really won’t stop looking until they have a body.”

The move was lightning quick and revealed the depths of violence contained within the wizened old mage knight. In a single thrust of his hand, he manifested a short dagger of pure mana focused to a razor’s edge and stabbed it deep into the nobleman’s stomach. As Gobeas gasped in pain, Keral twisted the blade of blue light, ripped it back out again, and let it disappear, all without getting a spot of blood on himself.

“It need not be hers, though.” Keral added after the fact in thoughtful repose. 

Gobeas lurched backwards, his hands coming to his stomach and trying to hold it in as he began to bleed freely. His back slammed against the wall and he slumped to the ground, looking up at Keral with glassy eyes. His gaze flickered to the mage knights guarding the prison wing, who hadn’t moved to defend him or attack Keral for the betrayal. “Why…”

“Such a pity, that this betrayal would come from such a  _ minor _ noble lord of the Below.” Keral went on, cutting the man off. He set his arms behind the small of his back and paced about with confidence. “A man with appetites for wealth above his station, so hungry for the pleasures of life that he would  _ sell his own citizens _ for material gain. A crime enough, depriving the Mage King of servants that tilled the earth of Below to make sustenance, who would serve him under his watchful protection. But then, to have that same baron turn around and use the opportunity of a visiting royal’s presence to carry out one grand sale...Endless, bottomless greed. They will look for Bezel, and they will not find her, ever. For how can they? She has been sold, the same as all of the other captured citizens who no longer reside here. Such a crime would be unthinkable to proper servants of Atlantis and the Crown. But then, you never were. Lying all the while about your true assets, depriving Atlantis of taxes? Your guilt knows no bounds.” 

Roland’s breathing came shallowly. “You’ll- never-”

Keral ignored him, waving an arm above his head. “And what of I? Knight Commander Finna Keral, loyal servant of Atlantis for more than forty years in the Mage Knights. I, who was fed the same lies as everyone else and realized too late the depths of your cursed ambitions? I was too late to save the princess from your scheme, too late to fight back against the invading slavers you sold them to. But I was not too late to exact vengeance upon you, and upon your regional knights who were more loyal to you than to the Mage King.” 

Keral knelt down in front of Gobeas, whose eyes had gone glassy and whose face was paler than it should have been. “It will be a terrible tragedy. Terrible, especially after Banali City’s massacre of the King’s brother and his family. Another royal, taken too soon, another light of order and justice gone out in the world. Your family name will be cursed for generations, your lineage will be ended. But the lands endure, Atlantis will endure, and they will need good men,  _ loyal men, _ to rule The Below. Men who place loyalty and devoted service to the Crown above all. Men like...me.”

Roland Gobeas breathed his last, and his head lolled to the side, staring out blankly. The knight commander didn’t even do him the service of closing his eyes for him, and rose back up on his feet, turning to one of his men.

“After the sale is completed, kill the Baron’s personal guards outside.” He told the mage knight calmly. “This will be the last sale we will be able to make, but we will all be retiring very rich men. Pass the word on to the men. They can be silent rich men, or poor, dead men.”

“Yes, sir.” The nearest knight said with a cruel smile, and left to spread the plan. 

 

And then the mountain began to shake. Keral looked up in partial interest and smiled. “Ah, good. They’re here.” He looked back to Bezel’s cage and made a gesture to one of the other knights in the corridor. “Bring this lot out with us. As we’re burning this bridge, let’s show off our very best merchandise first and get them to raise their offering price.”

The other knights in the corridor, loyal either to profit alone or to Keral personally, moved quickly to carry out his orders. Shouting in Atlantean, they forced Bezel and her Knight and the others out of the cell into the hallway, and marched them back out of the mines.

Bezel stared at the cooling body of Baron Roland Gobeas as they passed by, and found her stomach twisted up all over again. He deserved to pay for what he had done, but to be murdered…

Her stomach twisted all the harder as she realized that there was someone worse than a corrupt noble left for them to deal with.

Keral was a corrupt mage knight in charge of a corrupt army. Their plan had collapsed in the face of that fact.

 

***

 

Bezel had thought that the ‘Surgalans’ they’d overheard these traitorous monsters talking about were some unknown pocket of humanity somewhere on Terra with deep pockets and a need for cheap labor. She had thought wrong. The way that the mountain had rumbled should have been a dead giveaway.

Her panic picked up in intensity as she, her Knight, and all the other ‘attractive’ prospective slaves were led outside, and she got her first good look at the ship that belonged to the ‘people’ that Keral and his troops intended on selling them all off to. A ship that didn’t look anything like the skyships that Bezel knew of. A ship that was meant to fly higher, and farther...and probably faster. 

It was no skyship sitting in the yard, dwarfing every other vessel, but a thick and garish boxy thing painted ash gray with toxic yellow running lights. A  _ star-ship.  _ And at the bottom of a large loading ramp with the tail end pointed towards the mountain and the mine entrance, a large band of the Surgalans waited. Close to 100 in number. She wondered if there were any left in the ship at all. 

_ Exenos. _ That was what her Knight called them. Creatures from beyond the stars. Who the Mage Knights were supposed to  _ defend _ Terra from, along with the eldritch horrors that snuck in from beyond the Veil. The people who had gone missing before, who had been  _ taken _ before…

Sweet mana, they weren’t even  _ on Terra _ anymore. And the things in front of them, standing at attention were anything but human.

They were taller than humans, and their faces were sharp and angular with pointed snouts and beady black eyes. They looked like a twisted mix of human and jackal. Fur of varying color covered their bodies, ranging from dark black to stone brown and pale yellow and amber red. They wore shimmering skirts and went bare-chested, save for their jewelry. And they carried enormous staves with apertured bulbs on the ends, pointing up into the sky. If any of them were female, Bezel couldn’t tell. They all looked male. They all looked dangerous.

One of them, wearing finer jewelry and even golden armbands encrusted with some kind of precious stone that shimmered aquamarine stepped slightly ahead of the rest, holding up a strange metal sphere in one hand and a boxier device in the other. They were stopped ten paces away from the jackal-headed Surgalans, and Knight Commander Keral advanced two more steps, nodding once at the leader of the  _ exenos. _ The fellow nodded back and hefted the orb, which glowed around its equator before rising up and hovering in midair. Then he brought the other device up to his snout and started...barking? Yipping? There was some growling in there as well, but somehow, it was a language, because the orb floating beside him spritzed once and then started talking in monotone, horribly stilted Atlantean. It didn’t sound like a person. It sounded like a facsimile of a person.

**“We bring greetings from Gala Mar, Terrans, and silver and gold. You have slaves to offer in trade?”**

“If the price is right.” Keral said, and the hovering orb spat out what he said in the strange Surgalan language of barks, yips, and growls. Bezel looked over to her Knight, searching his face for a sign. A sign that he had a plan to get them out of this. That she hadn’t just walked them into a trap, into slavery or a quick and sudden death when they fought for their freedom out of this mess.

He didn’t say a word, but the look in his eyes wasn’t hopelessness. No. He seemed determined. Focused. He brought his bound hands up to his chest...and tapped over his heart.

Right where she had hidden the emergency beacon for the 242nd RRD that Sloane had given them. Her eyes widened, and she looked to him for confirmation. He gave the barest nod of his head, so slight that she would have missed it if he had been anyone else. But he was her Knight, and she knew him so well. In that hint, in that gesture, was everything she needed to stay calm.

Her Knight was tense, but not worried. He still saw options. He still had a plan, and he knew something, or suspected something that she did not about the beacon. An answer she hadn’t puzzled out yet. So she focused on that, and gave the bartering between Surgalan and traitor to the Mage Knights and Atlantis and Terra only part of her attention. She’d missed quite a bit of their ongoing dialogue in her need for reassurance.

**“You are saying that this will be our last shipment?”** The mechanical voice from the orb translated, and there was no heat in it, though the animated gestures from the Surgalan representative of the slave buyers had clearly meant to evoke irritation. Or outrage.

“The Atlantean authorities have been closing in. We must finish our business quickly and send you on your way. Besides, you have not been lacking for slaves from us. By my count, you have purchased well over 3000 Terran slaves of varying breeds from us since Atlantis closed off your supply lines.” Keral examined his fingernails in an exaggerated gesture of boredom. “Of course, you and the other slave-using outsiders from the stars may continue to try your luck at coming to Terra and gathering slaves yourself without payment, but you would not get very far. That you have taken so many is due only to the assistance of my men and myself. After today, events will make Atlantis more vigilant. So, yes. This will be your last shipment. But we have gathered a fine selection for you. Workers of older years, children who will grow into the roles, and these; the cream of the crop.”

More mechanical barks and yips came from the orb translating between Atlantean and the alien language, and then several seconds went by as the lead Surgalan punched a button on his remote that made the orb’s lights dim; a silencing effect? He and the other  _ exenos _ quickly started to talk with one another in sharper barks and yips, evaluating their options. A full minute went by, Keral watching in obvious boredom, before they finally came to a consensus and all turned back to them. The orb brightened again, and their representative spoke.

**“We wish to examine these slaves before making payment or taking them aboard. It is the way of sellers to try and pass off diseased and elderly animals instead of healthy ones, demanding the price for younger, fertile slaves.”**

“As you wish.” Keral said unflappably. “We have approximately 350 slaves currently in the mountain. If you wish to see them all, we can walk some of your men inside to examine them. I just hope that your deliberations after do not take so long. Our time grows short.”

**“Why do you not just bring them all out?”**

Keral smiled a cold smile. “And give you the opportunity to attack with your weapons blazing and make off with them for nothing but the cost of your shed blood? No. Until payment is made, the rest will stay where they are. Try to betray me, and I will collapse the mountain and bury them inside, and you will get  _ nothing.” _

After the orb translated it, the lead Surgalan’s ears went back flat against his skull, and his snout opened enough to let out a low, angry growl. 

**“You are a hard Terran. Very well.”** The jackal-headed outsider made a gesture, and a dozen of the Surgalans in the band behind him stepped forward and started towards the mountain. Keral also gestured, and a formation of his corrupt knights went to escort the Surgalans. The speaker turned and examined Bezel and the others who had been brought outside, and his snout curled into a grimace that might have counted as a smile.  **“These ones look as though they will bring good pleasure.”**

Bezel couldn’t hold back the shiver at that, and the timing was suspicious enough that Keral glanced in her direction with a narrowed eye. She looked between the orb, and the Surgalan, and the corrupt knight commander with wide eyes, finding it very easy to evoke the fear she was feeling.  _ I can’t speak Atlantean, but I can read faces well enough and I know enough Atlantean to be afraid. _ She barely breathed until he looked away, sizing up the ship and speaking with the Surgalan more.

And then her mind, which had been spinning away for possibilities, finally hit on why her Knight had been so cool-headed during all of this. Why he had relaxed as soon as Baron Gobeas came stumbling in and blurted out the mess that the operation was in because of Bezel.

She almost gasped, and clamped her mouth shut so all that escaped her was a muffled whimper. 

Gobeas had said that knights from elsewhere in the world had been tasked with scouring the province for the missing princess. Even knights from the RRD.

And who did they know in the RRD? Who had promised them that he, and his entire unit, would come running if they needed them? Who would kick over every stone, search every scrap of land and cavern and wilderness for them if he thought for a  _ second _ that they were in trouble?

Her Knight wasn’t worried about their fate, because they had called for reinforcements, and those reinforcements weren’t a day away. They had been hours away when they activated the beacon. Or  _ less. _

That burning thought, like a ray of brilliant sunlight through overcast skies, made Bezel look up into the skies around them. Look for a rescue she was sure was coming, but that she couldn’t know the timing of.

Nobody else was looking up. The Surgalans were looking at the corrupt knights or at their new slaves waiting to be purchased. The knights were looking at the Surgalans, on guard for betrayal. The slaves were looking down at the ground, defeated, crying silently, seeing no salvation ahead of them.

Bezel looked up into the gray skies above the Wul Mountains and saw a horde of tiny specks emerging from them.

Skyships. A full two dozen in number.

 

_ “Everything will be okay.”  _ Bezel uttered in Ruscovy, and then again in Arocan. And the others who had been in her cell and were now outside with her jerked their heads up and looked at her, wondering how she could be so reassuring, so  _ hopeful _ when they had no hope left.

Keral was looking at her again.  _ Really _ looking at her, with eyes that were piercing and evaluative, like she was an insect under glass. But Bezel wasn’t alone now, and while she was afraid, she wasn’t paralyzed by it. 

She  _ wanted _ him looking at her, really. She needed him and the others on the ground distracted. 

“Nobody is getting  _ sold _ here today.” She announced in perfect Atlantean, feeling the Knight come up behind her hiding long enough for him to work just enough magic through his hands and wrists to burn through the ropes binding them. She held off on freeing her own, and listened as the orb hovering by the Surgalans translated her voice into the barks and yips of the jackal-headed  _ exenos _ . “Knight Commander Keral. For the murder of a nobleman, for high crimes against Terra and its people, for treason and selfish ambition, you are under arrest.”

“You sure this is the smart play?” Her Knight muttered in her ear, just loud enough for her to barely hear him. It only made her smile more.

The smile that Keral fixed on her, while the orb translated the message back to the uneasy, shifting Surgalans that fingered their weapons, was one of thin amusement, like someone waiting for an excuse to exact terrible violence.

“And who are you, girl, to speak such perfect Atlantean and yet come from here and look the way you do? Some cast-off bastard of true Atlanteans whelped on the locals? A former servant of Gobeas? Some stripling mage knight trying to make a name for herself in a suicidal raid?”

Bezel didn’t dare look back up into the skies again, but she knew they were coming. She could almost hear them, a faint buzzing of the winds blowing over their wings and their hulls. 

_ The truth will melt my illusions, always, _ Ama Yagi had said.

 

Bezel called on her aura and let it flare high and strong, a beacon stretching high into the air of blinding blue light. The illusions on her dissipated in an instant, and the rope around her hands burned off just as quickly. Brown hair bled away, revealing the bright red underneath. The Surgalans shrieked and fell back paces, lowering their staves towards her in a panic, while Keral’s placid features went stone blank as what little color was in his face disappeared.

**_“I am Princess Bezel Lantea, and I am the vengeance of those you have wronged.”_ **

 

And then the skyships of the 242nd RRD screamed in, and the mage knights aboard started firing blast after blast, keeping clear of the blazing beacon of her presence.

The battle was joined.

 

***

 

The mage knights above took aim at the skyships parked on the ground, at the alien star-ship, and at the Surgalans themselves. Bolts of magefire and gouging funnels of incineration blasts tore through Atlantean shipcraft and foreign star-hardened metal with explosions and burning holes that disintegrated the armor plating instantly. The Surgalans howled and raised their staves, and the bulbed ends came to life, firing blast after blast of white hot light up into the sky. A few shots landed onto the skyships, but they were too numerous to be truly held back, and it only exposed them to even harder magical crossfire, sending the Surgalans scattering.

Knight Commander Keral at last wore a face with proper emotion on it, glowing with a mixture of exasperation and utter loathing. “Princess Bezel. How  _ unfortunate. _ And you even brought friends.” 

“Mage knights who have not forgotten the oath they took.” Bezel said, and for as sorely tempted as she was to bring the man to task, she knew better than to try. She knew what her focus had to be. “Unlike you.” She ignited her aura in a blinding flare that burned at the eyes of Keral and the apparently more photosensitive Surgalans, who reeled away, yipping in pain. Keral grimaced and shrouded himself in a potent bubble shield meant to defend him against any attacks that would strike at him while he couldn’t see. 

It was the opportunity she needed, and Bezel turned around, grabbing for the others and ripping the ropes and chains around their arms off before telling them to run. And run they did, away from the Surgalans, away from the burning skyships and the dreaded star-ship, while behind them the sounds of battle escalated. 

Keral’s cold voice bellowed into a shout he directed to all of his men. “You want to live through this? You want to be rich? Then  _ fight! _ Kill them all!” She ran a little faster after hearing that.

“What’s the plan?” Her Knight asked her, keeping pace with her easily. 

“Get to the mines. Rescue the others before they’re taken away or sold off.” Bezel said, huffing as they ran along. “And pray that we can find Danel in this mess!”

“After that little stunt of yours…” Her Knight started, and let out a grunt as he conjured up a green shield to deflect a blast aimed for them. He hurled a counterstrike of burning force at the offending renegade knight that had fired it and kept on running. “...it’s more likely he’ll find us.”

Another squad of armored mage knights came running towards them, swords raised and magic glowing, and the former imprisoned slaves that they were escorting yelled in a panic. 

Two steps, a held breath, and Bezel fell into the familiar steps of her favored spell. A Repulsion Blast tailored for multiple targets blasted the troopers backwards and flattened them on the ground, knocking the wind out of them and making them lose control of their magic. Her Knight dashed in on the pack of them in a blur of magically-augmented speed right after, stealing one of their swords and using the hilt and his boots to knock each of them in the head to put them out. He could have killed them far more easily; was he holding himself back for her sake? 

Another squad was closing in, but unlike the last batch, the one in front tore off his helmet and yelled her name, and she crumpled in relief to see him carrying a familiar wooden staff in his hand.

“Danel!” She shouted, and the name had a bolstering effect on the  _ Ganarusa _ among their rescuees. The other man laughed and yelled out an order to the ‘knights’ flanking him, and they quickly closed ranks around Bezel and her Knight and the refugees. The very first thing he did was to give her back her Arocan staff, and the second was to extend the Knight’s personal sword back over to him. Only then did he pull Bezel in for a quick hug that left her squeaking in surprise.

“Damn, princess, you don’t do things by halves. How in the devil did you get an outside division of Mage Knights to come in here guns blazing?”

“Sent up a distress call.” Bezel answered, separating and quickly looking around for anyone trying to come after them.  Most of the other renegade knights had their hands full, and were trading blows with the 242nd RRD, who had finally begun landing and sending troops out onto the battlefield. The Surgalans were scattering, but putting up a fight for their lives, and even more of the creatures were pouring out of the ship, which was apparently crippled enough that it couldn’t take off. 

“My Knight figured out that our friends must have been nearby, and would be able to respond to our signal quickly.” She paused. “Danel...there’s no easy way to say this. Roland Gobeas is dead. You were right about him. He was behind this entire slaving operation, and started to panic when my disappearance complicated things. The knight commander back there, Keral...he murdered him. Wanted to use him as a scapegoat to take the blame for this, and walk away with a promotion for ‘uncovering’ it.”

Danel’s shoulders slumped a little at the news, but he shook it off. “I wanted him brought to justice, not slain. But he was a poor lord, and I won’t waste tears on someone who never saw myself and my mother as family. Not when I still have people to save.”

“We’re headed there now.” Bezel said, digging in her shirt and coming up with the emergency beacon, still flaring with blue and green light. “Keep this with you. If the RRD sees you as an enemy, surrender and demand to be seen by Knight Commander Sloane. Tell him who you are, tell him that you’re working with us. Tell him that…” She swallowed. Mana, so many things going on. So much to do. Too many variables at play. The 242nd was on a warpath looking for her, Keral probably wanted her dead, and Danel and his wolves  _ needed _ to live through this. She needed a message that Alastair Sloane would  _ know _ she would never have an untrustworthy soul pass on.

“Tell him that Aine’s daughter vouches for you and your men.” She finished firmly. “There are a lot of tunnels in the mountain. You and your wolves go one direction, my Knight and I will go down the other. Take everyone here with you.” She quickly rattled off an order in Arocan for the others to follow Danel, gesturing very broadly for the few who didn’t speak Arocan or Ruscovy and who didn’t understand Atlantean. The message got across well enough; those who didn’t understand her clearly got the intent, and were unwilling to separate from the other rescued slaves who went with Danel and his band.

They ran into the old and once abandoned mineshafts, the most crucial leg of their rescue mission coming into focus at last.

 

***

 

There were knights inside of the mines, knights that Bezel knew were oathbreakers. With no orders passed on from outside, some had raced towards the sounds of clamor and battle, likely suspecting that the Surgalans had reneged on the barter. That had been her best guess, but as soon as it became clear that they were under attack from mage knights  _ not _ in on the scheme, the reactions ran the gamut. Some saw Bezel, her hair and her aura unmistakable in spite of how she was dressed and surrendered, dropping their swords at their feet. Those she bound with a paralyzing spell that her Knight had taught her, with him mirroring the motion on duplicates she didn’t have the time for. The few who came at them with steel and magic swinging, they put down hard. Undoubtedly, they would have broken bones after being slammed into walls and iron bars from her repulsion blasts, to say nothing of her Knight’s more directly violent tactics. He rarely bothered using his magic when fighting them, save to augment his speed and his resilience. The ones he didn’t cut down usually ended up bleeding from shattered noses or groaning in a heap from concussions and battered ribs, even with their armor. 

Every door they passed by, they smashed open. Every cell full of frightened slaves they set free, they screamed at them to run for their lives and hide. A few went for the dropped weapons of their captors, and Bezel let them take them. She only had to intervene once to keep one particularly enraged man from killing a subdued knight who had surrendered rather than raise a sword against the princess of Atlantis. Most were too terrified to consider a violent response; they wanted to escape more than they wanted vengeance.

Halfway through their race through the old converted mineshafts, Bezel and her Knight finally came across the cell where the rest of Danel’s wolves had been taken. Or rather, the remains of it. It had been blown open from the inside, and the guards around it were dying or incapacitated, victimized by the same kind of attacks that had been so effective against her and her Knight back in Khav. And the swords of the guards were missing.

“They’ve been busy.” Her Knight mused. “Guess they heard the party going on outside and decided they wanted to join in on it.”

“They didn’t head for the exit.” Bezel reminded him, relieved that Danel’s resistance fighters had their priorities right. They hadn’t come to slaughter the corrupt mage knights, they had come to save their people. She closed the eyes of a dead mage knight in the hall and stood back up. “We need to find them and get everyone out. I’m not certain that Keral wasn’t telling the truth back there with the  _ exenos.” _

Her Knight startled a little. “You think he’s rigged this mountain to blow? They don’t make spell-bombs that big. The mana that would take would be enormous!”

“Unless you knew the fault lines.” Bezel reminded him, starting back up at a brisk jog. “You can do a lot with a less forceful push if you target the right joints. You taught me that.” Her Knight ran faster at that bit of information and she struggled to follow, quickly getting winded as she tried to match his pace. 

Two more sharp turns in the darkness brought them closer to the sounds of battle and had them passing by even more broken cell doors, although nobody had come running towards them to escape. The reason became apparent when after a third turn that took them even deeper underground, they were met with the sight of several escaped slaves doing battle with a  _ very _ dedicated group of guards, and only the fact that they had numbers on the corrupt mage knights spared them from the slaughter. That, and the few sachets thrown on the ground whose fumes robbed the knights of their ability to call up their magic effectively. 

_ “How many more?!” _ Bezel shouted at them in Ruscovy, and one wolf less engaged than the others looked over his shoulder, recognizing Bezel and her Knight. 

_ “Don’t know. There - fewer- knights around. Close to end, maybe.” _ She picked out the words she could from his far more fluent speech and nodded, then she looked to her Knight and gave him a look with an order embedded in it. 

He jumped ahead and swept into the line of the prison guards like a scythe, cutting them down and battering their swords and weaker auras aside with the strength of his magic, his arm, and the combination of the two that made the tang and the edge of his blade gleam aquamarine. 

Overwhelmed by the sudden presence of two capable combatants in the mix of enemies that had previously only held desperation and numbers, the last of the clustered guards in the tunnels finally crumbled and were defeated. Bezel bound the ones that would live and kept on moving, swirling amidst a sea of bodies of protectors and the protected.

Her people. Every cage they came across, they smashed. Every band of humans who had been taken and bound for slavery found themselves reaching to the others who were freed, looking for friends and family that they had been separated from. The ones that broke her heart the most were when they found  _ children _ in the cages, too small to fight, too scared to run or to even follow instructions. Or when they found mothers holding babies screaming tightly, babies whose diapers were soiled days ago. 

She had never felt so angry, not even when those in the leadership of the Mage Knights had dared to speak against her Knight. He, at least, could defend himself. But nobody had helped these people, nobody but Danel and his wolves. And now her and her Knight. 

_ “That’s everyone!” _ Another wolf shouted, brandishing a stolen mage knight’s sword and waving it over his head, where it glimmered with red light channeled from his aura. Combined with the magelights embedded into the wall sconces, it gave an eerie glow over the nearly hundred people choking the tunnel. 

_ “All safe? We’re leaving! Follow us!”  _ Bezel shouted in the same language, quickly reverting to Atlantean for her Knight. “The last cells are open, we’ve got everyone. Come on!” 

They moved as one, Bezel and her Knight on point as the procession left the tunnels the way they had come in, the mountain still shaking from the battle happening outside and sending dust over them. She looked up at the ceiling in fear and somehow found the strength to keep moving. More lives than her own were in peril. She was the princess of Atlantis, and more than the opulent dresses, more than being waited on, this was what it meant. It meant standing strong when people looked to her, protecting them. It meant never giving in to the same fear that had gripped her as a little girl. She was still there, under the bleachers of a parade turned into a massacre with the blood of her family dripping down on her, curled into a ball and whimpering. Only now there were others hiding there as well.

Her Knight reached for her and pulled her up. She reached to everyone else, and they all kept running.

They ran until they couldn’t, until an obstacle stood in their path. An old and hyperlethal knight commander with gray hair and a sword that  _ burned _ with green light, so deep and dark that the emerald gleam cast everything into shadow.

“You  _ bitch, _ you’ve cost me everything.” Keral announced, his voice very nearly a growl as his eyes flashed the same ominous color. 

“You are no mage knight.” She countered, raising her staff into a defensive stance while her Knight gripped his sword in both hands, standing beside her and channeling his own green mana tinted blue into his body and his blade. “And you will  _ not _ hurt these people. You will not  _ bury _ your sins. You will be judged for your crimes, and then punished for your treason and greed.”

She risked a glance over her shoulder, seeing the wolves hurriedly hissing orders to the freed slaves they were escorting as they pulled back and quickly took defensive poses of their own.

_ “Shield all. We stop him.”  _ She barked at them, and then jerked her head back towards Keral right as her Knight let out a hiss of warning and flew into motion.

Her eyes went wide as their swords met barely a foot and a half from her face, throwing sparks in every direction. Keral bared his teeth and turned his ire on her Knight, who threw him back a step and then charged in to try and gain advantage.

They were a moving blur of green on green almost too fast to follow, and at every stroke, Bezel could feel that the more experienced Keral was pushing and pushing to get past him and strike her down. The grunts she heard came more from her lover than the cold-hearted man who was out for vengeance. Behind her, auras of red and orange and even yellow burned brightly as the wolves cast out shield spells that blurred and meshed into each other’s fields, creating a wall of burning sunrise light strong enough to hold back any glancing attack aimed in the direction of the noncombatants. Anything that could break it, Bezel knew, would require time to channel and cast. 

Time that her Knight, and she, could not give Keral. Did not.

She couldn’t move as fast as her Knight. She’d practiced with him, but the frenetic pace that he and Keral set was unlike anything that she had ever done in training. She channeled her magic through her body, felt it burn in her muscles and her mind as every part of her began to twitch with greater reflexes and potential. She could see them better now, make out the shape of the old man and her lover as they clashed. Bezel could see that Keral still wanted to end her, he made no secret of it. The only thing keeping him from it was her Knight. But he was tiring out, and for all that her Knight had survived Zolim, Keral was clearly skilled as well. She raced in, using her staff less to try and strike at Keral and more just to deflect him. She could be a wall to hold him back, to give her Knight a chance to catch his breath. 

It was working up until Keral suddenly conjured up a blade of pure magic again in his off-hand, and then came at her using both an enspelled blade and one of raw mana. Somehow he found the reserves to move even  _ faster _ until it was all she could do to keep him from striking a mortal blow. 

One of his swords slid past her head, caught on her guard, and he extinguished the manablade and crooked his arm, smashing his fist into the side of her head and sending her reeling. She slumped to the ground, seeing stars, and could hear the agonized roar of her Knight through a dull roar of ocean that rang in her ears.

“Pathetic boy.” Keral was taunting,  _ angry, _ goading him. “I’ve heard of you. Bezel’s Knight. Her  _ Protector. _ You can’t protect anyone, boy, not even yourself.” Bezel tried to say something, to warn him, because she knew that kind of voice. She’d heard it time and time again from Jorran on the few opportunities that she’d been unfortunate enough to bear witness to his duels and his ‘spars’ which almost always ended up with his opponent requiring immediate medical attention. Jorran, who was a pre-eminent warrior, more skilled on the battlefield than their older brother Desmond. Jorran, who was cruel and calculating and used his words like his sword, making a dozen smaller humiliating cuts that bled freely but rarely with mortal effect. 

 

Her head was still spinning and the air tasted wrong and she wanted to throw up. But her staff was on the ground ahead of her, and Keral was still there, fighting him, and if she didn’t help, he would die. Her Knight, the boy she loved, the boy who loved her and made her life  _ mean something _ beyond obligation and expectations and duty would die, and she would die after him. And then everyone else in this mine would die after. 

Keral would perish too, but he didn’t care. He was past the point of caring, she could hear it in his voice. The cool, calculating math that drove him to the most pragmatic answer was gone. Whatever happened, there was no positive outcome for Keral, for his operation, for his reputation. There was no way for him to pin all of this on Baron Roland Gobeas, whose body was still going cold in the mountain, not when the 242nd RRD had caught his entire division red-handed in the presence of the Surgalans. Not when an emergency beacon belonging to Princess Bezel Lantea had brought them right on his doorstep.

He meant to kill everyone, to cause as much pain as he possibly could. Keral was a man with nothing to lose, and that made him the most dangerous man in the mine. Everyone else was afraid of dying. Keral wasn’t. 

She hurt all over, and she was tired. Her head kept spinning, and she couldn’t concentrate long enough to cast a spell. Head injuries. Head injuries were always a problem. But she could hear the cries and the whimpering from the freed slaves, the shouts of encouragement from Danel’s wolves behind their shield, hoping and praying that her Knight could stop Keral. But her Knight had had a foot in the grave only a week before. Her Knight was still tired, still weak. 

She had told him that his place was at her side. Bezel remembered that much, and she pushed down the nausea and grabbed her staff and forced herself to stand back up again. Because surely the reverse was true.

She belonged at his side just as much as he did hers. Even now.  _ Especially _ now. Now, when she could hear his screams, hear him struggling to stay alive, and heard the whisper of his voice underneath it all.

_ I know your heart. You cannot look on suffering and turn away from it. _

Bezel Lantea forced herself to focus, to see the world as it was, and the blurriness finally disappeared for sharp lines of two figures whose auras gleamed dimly. A boy, bleeding from a gash along one arm, using both of them to hold back the steel blade of the old man who kept forcing him down, down,  _ down _ to the ground onto one buckled knee. And Keral’s other hand, hanging from his side and bleeding just as badly as the Knight’s injury, twitched, and formed a cupped fist, turning slightly inwards at an angle towards the boy’s sternum.

He was preparing to draw his manablade one last time. At that distance, it would be instantaneous, a clean stab needing less than a second to manifest and jerk his arm forward. 

Bezel screamed and her aura  _ ignited _ around her, the blue burning bright and shifting until half of it was a blazing pink. The power swelled up on her emotions and she lunged at Keral, swinging her staff like a two-handed club. It was enough to make Keral startle and react, jerking his sword up to block the messy strike that could have caved his skull in.

It was all of a moment’s worth of distraction, but that was enough for her Knight. Enough for him to push up off of his good leg, turn his sword, and spear the old man through the heart with it. Keral shuddered once from the hit, but he didn’t register the pain. Not right away. His head turned away from Bezel and her staff, and he looked down at the steel buried in his chest with a numb, unblinking expression of surprise.

No last words of rage, no apoplectic expression marred his face in his final moments. The old man stared at the sword for two seconds, then three, and looked first to the Knight still holding on to it, and then to Bezel.

He closed his eyes and sighed, and the Knight pulled his blade free, and Keral fell dead as the blood poured out of him.

 

She dropped her staff and moved to her Knight’s side, running her hands over him. “Are you all right?” She asked him dizzily. “Please, tell me you’re…”

“I’ll live.” He told her, exhausted and worn out. Bezel smiled a little at that, but then the pain of her blinding headache came back twice as hard, and she lurched away from him and vomited onto the ground.

It was all screams and concerned voices after that, and she found herself being picked up, being carried with one arm under her knees and the other under her back. She tried to keep her eyes open, everyone kept telling her to stay awake, even though that was the last thing she wanted. 

_ My staff, _ she tried to say, and almost laughed right after. Nauseated, concussed hard enough to throw up, bone tired, and running for their lives, and she was worried about her  _ staff. _

“Keep talking, Bezel.” Her Knight said in a hoarse voice above her. “Don’t fall asleep. Just keep talking.”

Her eyes were only open a crack, the light was too bright and the noises were too loud and she just wanted to curl up into him and let the world fade away. But she could focus on his face. On his eyes.

“So pretty.” She got out, trying to smile. One hand came up and she aimed it for the side of his face, and ended up missing and shoving a finger into his nose, making him snort and cough. “Got p’tty eyes.”

“I do, do I?” He asked her, sneezing once as her hand fell away. 

“M’ staff…”

“We have it.” 

“We did it.” She said, blinking rapidly. “We...we saved everyone?”

They had. Keral was dead, the Surgalans were grounded. The 242nd was…

 

_ “Your highness!” _ A bellowing road, and loud footsteps came running towards them right as the dim light of the tunnel gave away for gray cloudy daylight. She whimpered and slammed her eyes shut.

“Sir!” She heard her Knight shout. “We have hundreds of Terran citizens from the province and elsewhere in need of medical attention, and Bezel is…”

She felt a large, warm hand press against her forehead. Not her Knight’s hand, but a rougher one. Broader. Sloane’s.

“I have you, your highness. Please. Stay awake. Please.”

“Hurts.” Bezel whimpered, and the hand stroked her hair back again. 

_ “Healers!” _ Sloane bellowed, and Bezel stopped fighting the current. She slipped into darkness and let it take her away from the light and the noise of the world.

 

***

 

When she came to again, she felt warm, warmer than she had since leaving Aroca, and she was surrounded in softness and comfort that she couldn’t place. Not until she opened her eyes and found herself lying swaddled in blankets on a cot that must have had extra layers of padding underneath was she able to place why it felt so different. She’d gotten used to sleeping on hard ground in a bedroll, in the company of her Knight. It was little wonder she’d woken up.

The very next thing she saw was her Knight stirring at her bedside, slumped in a foldout chair with a blanket thrown over him, and his sword sitting across his lap. She felt exhausted and sore, but she didn’t have a headache and that surprised her. Or maybe not. They would have thrown their best healers at her, after all.

The look on his face, though, had her almost holding her breath. Longing. Love. A steady fear that only now seemed to abate as he saw her awake.

He went for a smile. “Welcome back, Bezel.”

“I...Where am I?” She mumbled, reaching a hand up to her head. She couldn’t even feel a lumpy bruise.

“We need to stop waking up in a healer’s care.” He answered her. “It sets a bad example.” The offhand remark made her giggle a little, but she looked at him expectantly and he finally shrugged. “It’s been a day and a half since you collapsed. You had Danel and his wolves and Knight Commander Sloane and all of the 242nd ready to burn the world down if it would save you. Danel  _ insisted _ on bringing in Ama Yagi to treat you.”

“And Sloane let him?” Bezel asked, surprised that a declared ‘outlaw’ would be so trusted.

Her Knight pulled his blanket away and scooted his chair in closer to her bed, still smiling. “You gave Danel your emergency beacon, remember? When Sloane came charging in and found him instead of you...well. It was touch and go for all of six seconds, Danel told me, but they got the people out of his section of the mines and then came looking for us.”

“And, and what about the Surga…” She started to ask, only to be silenced when he brought his bare hand up in a halting gesture.

“Later.” He told her gently. “You can worry about everyone else later. Right now, I want you to worry about yourself.”

It was a poor admonishment, but then he was so rarely ever angry or disappointed with her. She heard it for what it really was; a plea for her to take better care of herself.

_ Don’t go where I can’t follow you. _

“Did we save them?” Bezel asked, feeling her eyes mist up. “Can you tell me that, at least?”

His hand came to the side of her face, and his thumb stroked her cheek gently. “Everyone who was in the mine, we saved. Some of them were hurt, or in poor shape, but we saved them.  _ You _ saved them, Bezel.”

She took his hand and cradled it against her face for a moment longer, then brought the palm to her lips and kissed it gently. “I’m sorry I worried you.”

“You saved my life. I just wish you didn’t have to.” He murmured, taking her hand back from her and stroking at her hair. “I  _ will _ get stronger, Bezel. I promise you.”

He was strong enough, she wanted to tell him. Strong where it mattered, in his heart and in his spirit. There were so many things she wanted to tell him, of her fears, of her worries, how she was so glad that they were both alive, and how she was afraid that she would lose him after this. 

She wanted to say all of that, but all she got out was a sob of relief, and a whispered  _ “I love you.” _

It was enough, and as she closed her eyes, another presence came walking in, muttering curses in Ruscovy. Ama Yagi.

“So, girl. Tried your best to be a hero, and look where it got you. You need some more practice. And also some more rest.” Bezel smiled and started to open her eyes. Yagi scowled at her. “No, don’t you dare get up out of bed. I’ve got everyone out there believing you’re still resting, and the moment that old soldier hears you’re awake he won’t stop bothering you. So close those eyes and go back to sleep. And you!” Bezel heard the old woman scowl, likely at her Knight. “Stop with the flirting, and don’t you dare go kissing her now. Not around this lot, yes?”

“Believe me, I haven’t forgotten that lesson for an instant.” Her Knight rumbled, and the happiness of the moment was tamped down.

They were out of the wilderness now, and back in the sway of Atlantis. Sleep was a very appealing option in the face of that.

“You will watch over her?” Bezel heard Yagi ask him, softer than before. He made a soft noise, and must have nodded his head, because Yagi seemed satisfied enough to walk up to the bed and lean down, kissing Bezel’s forehead. “Sleep,  _ Lak Maiya. _ Sleep and dream.”

She knew so little in Ruscovy, but it was the work of seconds to translate that as Yagi retreated for the outside again.

_ Daughter Mine. _

 

Still feeling her Knight close by, and listening to the sound of his soft breathing, Bezel sank back into her blankets and allowed herself a few more moments of peaceful rest.

 

***

 

The summary of events was delivered in the auricular presence of the Mage King, who eavesdropped in on Knight Commander Sloane’s report through the aid of the 242nd RRD’s most experienced far-messager and the royal equivalent up on Atlantis. It was a little eerie to hear his voice coming from a speaker and seeing every soldier in the tent stand rigidly at attention, as though he were actually there or could see them. Bezel assumed it was because of how spitting mad the ruler of the world sounded. In comparison to her father’s usual pique, however, he seemed almost frantic this time around. Only Sloane seemed unaffected by it, deferential but neither kissing up to the man or cowed by him.

Bezel couldn’t help but think of her mother again, and how she had loved Sloane and been claimed by her father, against her wishes. She wondered how Sloane could stay in control and not scream his head off for a life and a love lost to the whims of royalty.  Time, perhaps, was the key in keeping the wound sealed. He stood at parade rest as he addressed the unit far-messaging mage keeping the connection up and intact, formally informal as ever.

She learned that it had been her father who first started raising a ruckus after she and her Knight left Khav and weren’t heard from for three days. When the provincial mage knights were tasked with locating her and only found an abandoned skyskiff before the trail went cold, a measure of holy hell had been raised, with the full focus of Atlantis turning onto the region. And then while Baron Roland Gobeas likely sweated under the pressure, outside investigations from soldiers  _ not _ under the sway of himself and Knight Commander Keral began to circle in, and discovered that Bezel wasn’t the only person who had gone missing. She was just the only one that anybody in authority had bothered to go looking for.

Finna Keral, as Sloane went on, was a career soldier who had started out as a squire long decades prior and worked his way up through the ranks. He descended from nobility, albeit a lower house that had little to it but a good name. His assignment to Ganarus Province had been seen as the bookend to a long career, a place to retire to. He’d had a reputation for being ambitious, and many had noted that he was more brutal than most when it came to enforcement. He’d ‘assisted’ in the search for Bezel, and volunteered his men to focus on searching the far-eastern reaches of the province, which he claimed was rugged terrain that the foreign reinforcements would have trouble with. Only after the fact did everyone realize why he’d been so insistent on dividing the search areas that way.

“In total...we estimate that this plan which the Baron and Keral cooked up together has resulted in perhaps as many as two-thousand residents of Terra being taken from their lives and sent into bondage out among the stars.” He concluded.

“Three thousand.” Bezel cut in bitterly, and every head in the large command tent turned towards her, resting on a chair with a fluffy cushion. “Over three thousand. And it wasn’t just people from this province that were being taken. There were Arocans, and Eurosians, and Asans among the people we freed. This corruption may have started here in two men we can no longer bring to task, but it has  _ reach. _ There must be others who were cooperating with them.” It made her sick, now that she had time and distance to reflect on it. There was a poison infesting the world, and she didn’t know deep it went.

“We arrested a great many of the knights who were in on this conspiracy, your highness.” Sloane reassured her, growling a little at the end. “It will take time, but I give my vow that I will root out every corrupt officer and soldier in the corps.”

“I would trust nobody else, Knight Commander Sloane.” Bezel smiled at him, relieved for that much of a solution to it. She knew Sloane, knew his heart by his words and his actions and how he cared for her and her Knight. It would be done.

_ “True, this is troubling.”  _ The Mage King’s dark voice rumbled.  _ “But you shouldn’t have been anywhere  _ **_near_ ** _ this mess, daughter. Much less in the thick of it, joining with...with partisans and outlaws and riding into battle! You said you wished to travel the world and learn of it, I expected that you would act with more decorum than this.” _

Bezel’s eyes narrowed, and she stared at the speaker broadcasting his voice through the magical connection of their far-messaging mages. “If you will recall, father, I did suggest to you that there might be those among the nobility who would be willing to stretch the truth or lie outright for their own gains. That is  _ exactly _ what happened here. Roland Gobeas felt he was owed more than his lot, and sacrificed his own people for ill-gotten wealth. He has  _ destroyed _ any trust and faith in Atlantis that these people had. I did  _ not _ travel to the surface to be feted and fed  _ lies _ while the corrupt and the self-serving spread suffering over people who do not deserve it!”

She should not have spoken so freely, the part of her that was used to cowering and holding her silence reminded her in a panicked voice. Nobody spoke to the Mage King with such bold audacity, not even his own blood. But that part of her had been dying off slowly, for years it seemed. Ever since Banali City. Ever since her innocence was torn away from her and she saw a truth to the world that all her tutors and her minders had kept away from her, locked as she was in a gilded cage.

Bezel Lantea was no longer that girl who could be lied to. Her Knight had saved her, shown her the world, and now…

_ “You speak very freely, daughter. Too freely, perhaps. We will have words about your conduct later on.” _ The King answered her.  _ “But other matters take precedence. As things stand, we have a province of Below which now lacks duly appointed authority, and the entire military presence is compromised. I will need to appoint a new baron to act as regent in my stead, and new mage knights will have to be commissioned while the Corps finishes its investigations and court-martials.” _

“I have an answer to both of those empty roles, father.” Bezel cut in, still tired, but finding the energy to speak. She couldn’t leave this decision up to chance, or worse, the nebbish favoritism of the hour. “It is my considered opinion that there is nobody better to serve as the Baron of Ganarus Province than Danel Rusla.”

_ “You would make a...an  _ **_outlaw_ ** _ a member of the nobility?”  _ The King demanded incredulously.

Bezel smiled. “Danel Rusla is the son of the former Steward who served under Roland Gobeas’s father...and he is also the  _ son _ of the former Baron as well. In terms of ability and temperament, we could find nobody better suited to the role; nobody else will be as well received by the  _ Ganarusa _ as he is. They know him, and trust him. And if blood and magic is all that accounts, then he is the last living descendant of the Gobeas bloodline.”

_ “A bastard offshoot of it.” _ The Mage King mused, and some in the tent stirred a little. Bezel winced and looked towards Danel, expecting to see him seething at the insult. She was shocked to find him just gaping at her, not at the speaker, gobsmacked by her proposal.

“If you want stability in the region, father, you will choose Danel as the new baron. His mother was Steward before and can be a Steward again, and his fighters can take on the role of protecting and safeguarding the province while the corrupt elements of the mage knights are investigated and stripped away.” She kept her eyes on Danel as she spoke, never looking away.

_ “Without regard to tradition, or the ranks of succession, or to the other nobles?” _

Bezel forced herself to breathe, to not yell at her father. She’d come this far, she had to make him listen. She had to make him see that her solution wasn’t the rash decision of an instant, but one considered, evaluated, and selected as the best possible choice.

“Mage King Volkas Lantea.” She intoned, formal when she had  _ never _ been quite so formal before. “I came to Terra to learn of it, so that I could serve as an advisor to my brother when he assumed the throne and took up your mantle.” Bezel pushed herself up out of her chair and stood on shaky legs, forcing herself to still until she was rigid as the mountains of the land. 

She willed herself, for this one moment, to be unbreakable.

“Allow me to advise you now.” Bezel Lantea declared darkly. “If you assign another Atlantean noble to Ganarus Province to rule as its Baron, you are making a statement; that the sins and missteps of the past will happen again. You will be declaring that Atlantis does not  _ care _ about the suffering of its people on the surface. You will be telling them that even though they have lost friends and family to the creatures from the stars, people that  _ we will never be able to rescue _ and that they  _ will never see again, _ that Atlantis does not care. You will be making a statement to the other nobles who would use their people as barter, sell them into slavery. You will be telling the rest of the nobility that you will do  _ nothing _ to check their corruption. And if they can do this, then how long will it be before their loyalties are no longer assured? This problem has been years in the making. The frustration that the people of Below feel is  _ real _ and tangible. It is strong enough that they will pray to  _ monsters _ for salvation from their suffering, and commit outright murder just so they can say that they did  _ something _ instead of withering away.”

Nobody in the tent moved, not a soul breathed save for Bezel, who panted as her heart thundered from fatigue and the adrenaline of the moment. Not even her father spoke, the speaker on and active and silent as he absorbed her message. She took the reprieve and charged on.

“Appoint Danel Rusla to the position of Baron in Ganarus Province. Tell the world that Atlantis is not the heartless monster that rules on high and cares for nobody but itself.”

 

_ “I...will take your words under advisement.”  _ The Mage King finally said.  _ “For now...Knight Commander Sloane? I give you and the 242nd operational and ruling authority over the province in the interim. Chase down the traitors who worked under Keral and Gobeas, and bring them to trial. You have my permission to...utilize outside resources. This Danel, for example. Your success, and his conduct, will be things I take into account when I render my final decision.”  _ He paused.  _ “Bezel, I still find your involvement in all of this distressing. You are a princess of the royal blood, and you act in ways that are heedless of your safety. Heroics are something you should leave to other, lesser people.” _

She bristled at the inequality within that statement. “You never cared about me before, father. I see no reason why you should start now.” It was a barb she knew to be at least a little untrue, but he had never invested much time with her, focusing his energies instead on her older brothers, and leaving her care to the governesses and escorts. Or perhaps she was tired enough to let the anger felt by others rise up in her. 

Whatever had made her say it, the words clearly had hit hard. The king made a soft choking noise, and it took him several tries to compose himself.

_ “Return home at once, Bezel. You and your knight protector.” _

She blanched. “But, my tour of Below…”

_ “It is postponed.”  _ He growled in response.  _ “You’ve been filling your head with strange ideas, and I should have your Knight tied to a post and lashed for everything you’ve gone through, which he has failed to protect you from.” _

“He was only doing as I ordered him!”

_ “I know.”  _ The Mage King snapped.  _ “That is the only reason I will allow you to  _ **_keep_ ** _ him as your personal guard. But only if you get on a skyskiff with him and return home within the day. Is that understood, princess?” _

Really, what was there for her to say to that? She should have listened to that whimpering voice earlier, but…

Bezel closed her eyes. “Yes, father.”

_ “Then I will see you soon.” _

The connection clicked off, and the far-messaging mage who had been powering it slumped forward a little, exhausted after the constant demand. Danel kept gaping, Sloane blinked rapidly.

Ama Yagi took a knee, an excessive labor for the older woman. Sloane was the next to kneel, and then her Knight, and then it was like a wave around her, leaving Bezel to turn left and then right and stare as everyone in the tent knelt in her presence. 

Knelt in the presence of royalty. 

“Your highness.” Yagi croaked out. “Would that every Mage King had a heart like yours.”

“Get up.” Bezel whispered. “Please. Please, get up.” She moved to the woman who had cared for her, who had taught her, and who had healed her, pulling on her arm until she did so.

“You want  _ me _ to rule here?” Danel finally gasped the words out, as gobsmacked as she’d ever seen him. Every scrap of the man’s composure, predictable and solid, seemed to be faded. “I know nothing about - about being a noble! I was only ever trained to be a Steward!”

Bezel had pushed herself to the limit, but she found the emotional strength to give him a soft smile. “I think perhaps we need more Stewards and fewer entitled nobles in charge of the provinces, don’t you?” She squeezed his mother’s arm. “Besides. Yagi here can help you out. I was perfectly serious. What has happened here is a tragedy that never should have taken place. You are the only person with the right experience and temperament and  _ trust _ of the people to hold them together. To rebuild. Besides, I’ve gone and made a fool of myself in front of my father now, so it would be poor form for you to refuse.”

Danel shook his head. “How can I be a good leader, when so many of our people have been lost?”

It was Sloane who answered in her place, and she was glad for his strong words. “Be a good man, Danel Rusla. The rest follows.”

 

And that, Bezel realized bitterly, was that.

“There are multiple skyskiffs outside, your highness.” Sloane told her gently. “We recovered yours, if you would care to use it.”

She’d run out of words, Bezel realized. She opened her mouth, and nothing came out of it. Her Knight must have seen it, because he was at her side in an instant and speaking when she couldn’t.

“We will. Thank you, sir. Thank you for coming when we needed you.”

Sloane’s hard eyes softened. “I promised I would.” Bezel couldn’t help but smile at that, giving him a grateful nod before she looked to Ama Yagi. 

The old woman pulled her into a tight hug, and spoke in a fierce whisper for her alone. “You take care of yourself,  _ Lak Maiya. _ Don’t let them change you.”

_ I won’t, _ Bezel promised silently, for there were no words left. Then her Knight was collecting their things, guiding her out of the tent, walking them to the skyskiff that they had left behind when they ventured into the wilderness. In minutes, she was seated belowdecks as the skyskiff raced up away from the ground, and towards the heavens where floating Atlantis beckoned.

They had gone searching for an outlaw plaguing a province with violence and attacks on mage knights, and had exposed a conspiracy of rot and ruin. Bezel hoped that her father would listen to her, and leave behind something better than what they found. She didn’t regret risking her life, or in standing with her Knight to save the people of Terra. She mourned the loss of those taken to the stars, never to be heard from again. 

It was minutes before another deeper loss hit home, and she fell into silent tears that went unchecked until her Knight came to the cabin and wiped them away with the pad of his thumb.

“None of that, now.” He soothed her.

“I’m sorry.” She told him sorrowfully. “I’ve ruined everything. Our trip, our...My research. And your freedom.”

He smiled, sad but brave for her sake. Brave when she couldn’t be. His mother would be so proud of him, and Bezel wondered if that wonderful woman who raised him would be proud of her as well.

“I think that we could convince Sloane to send a knight or two to take the rest of the readings you need.” He told her. “Especially if this investigation reaches out as far as you think it will.”

“And what about you?” She pressed him.

“What about me?” He reflected back at her gently, taking her hands in his. He seemed resigned to it. Like it didn’t matter. Or perhaps he was already shoving everything that she loved about him back into the box that was marked  _ do not open in the presence of Atlantis _ and tucked on a shelf in his mind. 

“When...when we get back, we…” She started, and bit her lip.

“You will be the Princess. And I will be your Knight.” He finished.

“But you are more than that.” Bezel whispered. “I don’t know if, if I can do that to you again. Lie about you like that again.”

“You will do what you must.” He told her. “I know you love me. You know I love you. Nobody can take that from us. If we have to hide it, then we hide it. Because I would rather hide it, than lose it. Or lose you.”

“You’ll never lose me.” She promised him fiercely, squeezing down on his hands.  “Never.” And the tears came in earnest, until his kisses took them away. Kisses to her forehead, then her closed eyelids, and her wet cheeks, and finally her lips as he held her close and comforted her.

He deserved so much more than this. He deserved to be free, to love her the way he wanted to. She wanted to love him without reservation, but she couldn’t. The ache it left behind made her mourn for what they should have been. What they might have been, if he had just been a boy and she had just been a girl, and Sloane had been her father.

But then, nobody would have saved the citizens of Dapana. Nobody would have rescued the captured citizens of the  _ Ganarusa _ and beyond. Bezel’s mind could see it so clearly, how worse things would be for so many people if she had not been the princess, and he had not grown into the role of her Knight.

Pulled in so many different directions, she clung to him fiercely as the ship flew itself towards Atlantis and breathed in the smell of him, remembering it for later.

“What can I give you?” She begged him, trembling in the quiet of the skyskiff’s cabin. He deserved so much more than he had been given. He had given her the world, and nothing that was hers was its equal in value.

His hands stroked along her back, and one hand came up to the back of her head, holding it gently as she nuzzled into his shoulder.

“This is enough.” He whispered to her. 

It was enough, she told herself. For now.


	7. She Crafted Wonders

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bezel and her Knight return to Atlantis under orders, and confined to that floating continent, she crafts and tinkers as she and her Knight struggle to love each other and the world moves around them. Her drive to learn about the world and about the secrets of magic and mana has the promise to change everything...  
> If she is brave enough to try.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Recommended music for this chapter is as follows:
> 
> -Bezel: Blackbird (John Lennon or Sarah McLachlan, your call)  
> -The Knight: Livin' Inside My Heart by Bob Seger
> 
> When the perspective changes between the Knight and Bezel, look for a K or a B.

**_Little Moment: The Sorceress And The Knight_ **

By Eric ‘Erico’ Lawson

* * *

**Six: She Crafted Wonders**

 

_ The Royal Palace _

_ Floating Continent Of Atlantis _

  
  


There was a shift in the Court of Atlantis after their return, and one that the Knight did not recognize immediately. In those early days and weeks, he was too busy trying to slip back into the mask and the role that was expected of him. To go back to standing behind and distant from his beloved Bezel when every part of him screamed to pull her into his arms and pepper her with kisses and soft touches that he  _ knew _ she missed was enough of a challenge. He could feel it in how she inhaled sharply in the mornings when she opened the door to her chambers and saw him waiting outside, how her green eyes gleamed in the rejoicing of his presence. There were times that she started to reach for his hand or his sleeve, or even towards his face underneath his helmet, then stilled and forced herself to stop.

There were whispers and rumors all around them as the reports from the 242nd RRD filtered back and were added to the surprising news out of Ganarus Province. The Knight could hardly miss how the servants did a double take as Bezel passed by them in the halls. She would  _ smile _ at them, ask them how their day was going. For Bezel, it was simple kindness, an acknowledgement of their humanity and their worth. After her time as Ella and the rescue she ordered and aided in Dapana, after Aroca, after Danel and  _ Ama Yagi _ she could do no less than that. Yet for the servants who worked and lived in the castle that were accustomed to being forced to lower their eyes and speak in quiet reverent tones and show nothing less than total deference, it was a quality that set her apart from her father and her two older brothers.

_ She is like her mother, _ the whispers came when the servants thought they were alone.  _ The Queen always was kind to us too.  _ The Knight never spoke to them, never shared in the gossip, never told them  _ why _ Bezel’s heart was so open and so kind. Everything they admired was everything that he loved, and to give voice to it would be to betray his true feelings.

There were other whispers too, less kind whispers that came from the halls of the Court. That Bezel, a sweet girl that nobody expected anything from save to look pretty and be wed off to whatever noble was in favor or needed buying off was becoming a member of the royal family worth keeping eyes on. Some that had never given her a second thought now sought to sidle up to her as she passed by, to make idle conversation and to introduce themselves, and to offer gifts. She was polite at first and then coldly dismissive when they persisted, and her Knight was always there to stand in their path when they didn’t take the hint. The Mage King had thought Bezel in danger down Below, but up on Atlantis, the Knight was forever on edge. 

Bezel paid no attention to any of the whispers and even less to the blatantly obvious sycophants. She was fortunate in that regard. Forced to return home and essentially kept under house arrest in those first months, she buried herself in her studies and in research. Maps of Terra and books of lore borrowed from the royal library were soon stacked all over her room and over the small space set aside for her off of the royal alchemist’s laboratory. Burying herself in her work was easier than facing the changes happening around her, _because_ of her. Especially when they were happening while she could do nothing about them.

Through it all, the Knight stayed close to her. Trapped in the palace, trapped behind their masks, they couldn’t love each other like they wanted. He never failed to offer her his hand when he could, when nobody was watching. When nobody could judge them.

She held it tightly every time. 

***

 

The Knight knocked on the door of her study and waited a moment to let her settle if she’d been caught by surprise at the disturbance. He walked inside after and paused, observing perilously stacked piles of books and notes scribbled out in Atlantean, most of them borrowed. A slate board was marked with dimly burning blue letters and equations, dotted by question marks.

Bezel herself was wearing one of the simplest dresses that she got away with and was scowling as she transcribed something from a  _ very _ faded scroll of parchment onto new paper. She was muttering angry swear words in Arocan as she did so, and he couldn’t help but smile when she reverted to Ruscovy, of which she knew less.

“Did the scroll say something to offend you?” He asked glibly, and smiled wider when Bezel let out a startled yelp and jerked herself away from the desk. When she recovered and turned her wide eyes towards him, he allowed himself the honest laugh she’d evoked in him. “Sorry, sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you. I  _ did _ knock. You must have been really engrossed in it.”

“Yes. I was.” Bezel sighed, and he watched as it extended out into a yawn. The Knight frowned and looked out into the hallway that led to the rest of the laboratory space before closing the door behind him and then leaning against it.

“What time did you wake up this morning?” He asked her, afraid to hear the answer. “I’m always up before you. I have to be, but I was standing outside your bedroom for an hour after you usually come out before I got brave enough to look inside and found it empty.” Her face fell, and his heart sank a little with it. “You didn’t sleep at all, did you?”

“Woke up at midnight.” She confessed, looking down at the page. “I couldn’t sleep. I just - I feel  _ trapped.” _ She explained, moving in a rush. “I wanted to be anywhere else but the palace. Doing  _ anything else. _ Traveling the world to meet people, learning more about magic, tracking the rest of the leylines. But I can’t  _ do any of that. _ And I can’t sleep.”

“So you came down here.” The Knight summarized. She nodded, and there was little else he could say to that. He could cheer her up at least. “Please try and sleep tonight. Tomorrow is my day off, and if you’re still willing…”

Her tired eyes brightened. “The Geenes?” She said in a soft whisper, becoming eager. 

“My friend ‘Ella’ always does love to come along with me.” The Knight mused, finding his smile again. “But I won’t take her if she’s too tired to move.”

Bezel stuck her tongue out at him and he just kept smirking at her. “Fine.” She conceded with a roll of her eyes. “I will try and  _ convince _ Miss Ella to get some proper rest. Even if...even if it’s difficult.”

The Knight nodded, accepting her concession. He looked to the paper she’d been copying and motioned with a nod of his head. “So. What has you so worked up you started swearing in Arocan, Bezel?”

The Princess of the whole world sighed, smiled, and then started to explain the  _ idiocy _ of modern magery and lost practices in excruciating detail. He only caught about one sentence out of every three, but it was still time well spent. It was time spent with her.

 

***

 

The Royal Palace was more than an imposing edifice that stood at the center of the floating continent. Hundreds of servants worked there, from the lowliest of scullery maids to the personal attendants of the royal family and whatever members of the Court were present on any given week. The easiest means of seeing to the feeding of them all were the larger subfloor dining halls, simply decorated and with tables and chairs made for durability over opulence. 

The Knight had gotten used to the rhythm of life in the palace, as much as he did not wish to. Coming back to it after his journey Below and seeing the world with Bezel only made him long for what they’d had in those precious weeks. For one, it was always too noisy. And for all that he appreciated his solitude, he never seemed to get it. Most of the other royal knights knew better than to interact with him; the ones who didn’t scorn him outright because of his low birth and station were usually too afraid of his potential. The thorough beating he’d given Instructor Drake to get Bezel out from under his ‘tutelage’ was legendary in the corps. 

There were some servants he could tolerate; the ones who were all of low birth like he’d been and grown up in rough living he understood and sympathized with. The low servants and the royal knights were by and large the two groups that he dealt with the most, but there were others. Those were the ones who didn’t know him well enough to avoid him or know when he just wanted some peace and quiet while he ate. The ones who sat by him and held loud, obnoxious conversations just because they saw a mostly empty table, and didn’t pay attention to who was sitting in it. 

Like today, with the gaggle of alchemists from the royal laboratories that Bezel’s workshop had a small corner of, bringing their meals and laughing their heads off.

“Honestly, I know that she’s good at making  _ trinkets, _ but she has no business trying to tell us how to do our jobs. We’ve  _ trained _ for this, it’s our livelihoods!” The first one said, and the Knight tightened his grip on the spoon he’d been using to ladle up his stew. He’d had occasion to pass through the alchemical laboratories before, and he knew very well that there were only ever  _ men _ employed there. There could be only one ‘she’ that they were speaking of.

“Well, to be fair to her, that thing she made when she was nine  _ was _ quite elaborate.” Another alchemist hesitantly defended her. “Although why she would bother to craft such a simple image in that much of a Working is something I still wonder at.”

“Sympathy for the commoners, I suppose.” A third suggested. 

“Aside from her choice in materials, the enspelling was rudimentary. There was nothing in it that was particularly revolutionary.” The first of the alchemists scoffed, tearing off a piece of bread and shoving it in his mouth. “She’sh not doin’ anyfhing orighunul!”

“Swallow, Ced.” The second chastised his companion. “You know, I overheard the Chief Alchemist complaining about her while she was on her tour of Below. It wasn’t his choice to even give her any space to ‘play in’, it was all set up by request of the Mage King.”

“And he’s upset with giving up that old storage closet? It was hardly ever useful. It’s too far away from our other work areas, it never got used. Why would he be upset about giving it up when it was just sitting there?” The third pointed out. The Knight relaxed a little, sensing that at least one of them, if not defending Bezel, had enough good sense not to criticize her. 

“Because we’ve got better things to be doing than catering to the whims of the unimportant royal.” The first alchemist, Ced, answered. He’d swallowed his food, at least. “Look, it’s all an act, you know? Her oldest brother’s going to become the Mage King. Her next brother Jorran is going to become the head of the Mage Knights. Nobody expected anything out of her except a couple of kids to some noble house brought into the fold, and now she’s running around Below, getting caught up in all kinds of trouble?”

“Oh, and that’s even juicier.” The second preened. “I heard from my cousin, who works on the skyship docks, that she didn’t finish her tour. That the Mage King made her come home. And nobody’s been talking about why.”

“D’you suppose she was doing something scandalous?” Ced hummed, way more cheerfully than was necessary. 

The Knight could hear the thundering of his blood in his ears. They didn’t know. They  _ didn’t know _ why she’d been recalled. That it had been her father overreacting, angry at her forwardness, or maybe just scared for her. Because of what she had done, what she and the Knight had been forced to go up against.  _ Exenos _ and corrupt nobles and corrupt knights, all working together to sell off the people that should have been  _ protected _ to the jackal-headed slavers from the stars. 

They didn’t know that the scandal wasn’t  _ hers, _ but that of the nobility and their wrongs left to fester for too long. Which meant that the truth behind it had been hidden. Not silenced completely, he’d never gotten any orders to not speak on it, but it hadn’t been encouraged either. 

 

The Knight and Bezel had both known that they were returning to a place where the masks they wore needed to match the expectations of those around them. For his own sake, he could care less what people thought of him, but it galled to think that these  _ alchemists _ who were hired on to be the premier researchers of magic in Atlantis would dismiss Bezel so easily, and fail to see her for who she was. 

His mug of tea suddenly had a small light flicker inside of it, and the Knight shook off his scowl and reached for the delicate chain that hung out and over the rim. Pulling it up, he removed a small polished river stone tied to the end of it, and let it hang in the air and drip dry. A single rune was carved into its surface, the Atlantean letter that could mean  _ warmth _ or  _ gentle heat _ or  _ candle flame _ depending on the context of the sentence. The rune on the stone flickered in a pulsing white light until the last of the tea had sloughed off of it, and then it went inert. The Knight smiled as he looked down at his mug of tea, now warmed to the proper temperature.

“Oi, you. Knight. What’s that you’ve got there?” The second alchemist rudely demanded of him. The Knight glanced up and glared daggers at the man, ready to tell him to piss off. Especially when the first one, Ced, looked at the stone and snorted.

“I think it’s an attempt at runecrafting.”

There was a rune, true, but the Knight knew that it was so much more than simple runecrafting. His tea warmer had been a gift from Bezel not many days ago, and he’d been using it every day since. It had come about because of an offhand remark he’d made about how the servants only were given cold tea, because it was considered too prohibitively expensive to keep the large serving pots hot for so many people of  _ low station _ all at once. Eager to do  _ something _ for him, and just as eager to try out a new bit of artificing, Bezel’s tea warmer had fit the bill.

The third of the alchemists leaned in closer, and with eyes that were sharper than those of his partners, he took in the rune. His eyes glowed faintly with orange light as he peered beneath the surface of the stone and tried to make out the Working hidden in it.

He must have seen something that impressed him, because he gasped and pulled his head back, blinking rapidly. “That is a  _ very _ precise Working. The parameters for activation and deactivation...Where did you get that?”

“Hey, Pikras, what are you jabbering on about?” The second alchemist demanded.

Tired of holding it up for inspection, the Knight stowed it back in the inner pocket of his jacket, underneath his mail.

“Yes, Pikras, what  _ are _ you jabbering on about?” Ced added, staring at the Knight with narrowed eyes. “So the knight has himself a little trinket that can warm a cup of tea. So what?”

“That charm is designed to activate  _ only _ if placed in a small amount of water, and  _ only _ for a certain amount of time, and it shuts off if removed.” The third alchemist Pikras explained, and the other two sat up a little straighter. The Knight kept his tongue, wanting to ask why that was so important that the charm had such conditions set on it, but not particularly feeling up to giving them more ammunition to work with. Pikras was doing a good enough job on his own. “And...how are you powering that?” He asked, finally looking at the Knight.

“I’m not.” The Knight replied. Pikras blinked in confusion.

“It has no mana reservoir. There is no means of charging it.”

 

Of course there wasn’t, the Knight knew. Bezel had told him as much. It drew power directly from the ambient mana about Atlantis, a trial run as she pieced together her research on the leylines. It was the prototype for her ‘magical capacitor’ that she’d mentioned to him long ago. A trickle charge, at best, and one that wasn’t always active. The amount of power it drew from the mana around Atlantis was negligible, compared to the other spell effects that kept the continent aloft and circling Terra. 

The Knight stood. “And yet it works.” He said, taking his tray in one hand and sipping at his tea in the other.

“Please, tell me where you got that. Tell me who made that for you.” Pikras begged him. The Knight paused and stared at him.

Ced, the first alchemist had been caustic and now looked jealous. The second alchemist looked doubtful. Pikras, the third, looked as though he’d seen a sliver of some greater truth and had seen the door slam shut in his face. Which, the Knight supposed, it had.

Trying for a shade of disgust a few degrees beneath murderous, the Knight looked at the alchemists. “Even though she has no business telling you how to do your jobs?” He rebuked them, staring at Ced as he threw the man’s harsh words right back at him. He waited for the light of recognition to come into their eyes, and then he turned and walked away.

Bezel was making miracles, the Knight realized. And the first miracle had been when she confessed that she loved him.

 

***

 

There were other parts of Court life that the Knight could have done without, and chief among them were the days when the Mage King insisted on Bezel’s attendance for events. Her father couched it in terms of ‘learning the other side of advising the king’ but the Knight found it telling how most of the court appearances Bezel was forced to attend were on days when there were nobles interested in ‘seeing the princess’ as they genuflected before the ruler of the world. When they were looking to see how she was turning out.

When they did everything but  _ drool _ over her. 

 

It was on one such day, perhaps half a year after their return, that the Knight found himself standing at attention in the royal knight’s uniform in the throne room. Volkas Lantea sat in the high throne, the queen’s throne was empty, and three smaller seats had been brought up and positioned on the dais for Bezel, to the left of the Queen’s throne, and for her brothers Desmond and Jorran who sat at their father’s right side. 

Then the doors opened and a piece of their other life came strolling in as the herald announced the new lord of Ganarus Province; Baron Danel Rusla. The Knight shot a look to Bezel, and she caught his eyes briefly as she looked away from the approaching Baron before she turned her eyes on her father. The king either didn’t notice her stare or didn’t feel it necessary to look back at her. The King had ended up taking Bezel’s advice after all, and she had been surprised by it.

The dark-haired ‘Wolf’ of the steppe looked much different than the Knight remembered him being at their last meeting. For one, he was dressed in dated, but acceptable finery. For another, the sword he was so used to seeing him carry was missing. And though he was nervous, Danel stood tall and carried himself well. No doubt, lessons taken from his mother had paid off.

 

As formally as any other noble ever was, Danel stopped at the foot of the stairs that went up to the dais and the throne and took a knee. “Your Majesty.”

“Danel Rusla.” The king said, solemn and with all the gravitas that the Knight had been expecting. “You come before the Court today to take the oath and provide an accounting of your province.”

“Yes, your majesty.” Danel stayed kneeling as the king stood, and a servant approached with his ceremonial sword made exclusively for this purpose. The king drew the blade and stood before Danel.

“Do you swear to serve Atlantis, and defend it from the threats from within, and from without?” The king asked, setting the blade down on his left shoulder.

“I swear.”

“Do you further swear that you will oversee your province, and be truthful to its value and service to Atlantis?” The sword moved to Danel’s right shoulder blade.

“...I swear.”

“And do you finally swear that you will serve the welfare of Atlantis above all other things?” The king asked as he raised his sword and laid it atop Danel’s head gently. The Knight had heard the vows of loyalty so many times during his stay as Bezel’s guardian that he could nearly quote them verbatim.

He was less used to hearing nonstandard answers to them, but that was what Danel Rusla offered. The man once called ‘The Wolf’ finally lifted his head and the sword both, and stared at the king. “I will serve the welfare of her people above all other things.” 

A low murmur passed through the Court, and the Knight smiled in spite of himself. The Mage King paused for a moment, seemed to accept the unusual response, and handed the sword back to the servant who had brought it out to him.

“Then rise, Baron of Ganarus, and be welcomed.”

 

Danel stood, nodding again to the king. “It is strange, to be standing here among you all.”

The king did not make to speak, and instead lifted a finger from his right hand off of the armrest, a signal that meant that others could speak. Desmond, his eldest and the Crown Prince, took up the opportunity.

“Indeed,  _ many _ of our ruling nobles from Below find the Court to be intimidating the first time out.” There was a low susurration of chuckles that swept the room from the other courtiers, and Desmond smiled thinly. “Some have remarked that they felt as though they didn’t belong.”

Danel smiled back at that, perhaps not seeing the challenge, or more likely seeing it and not caring. “Oh, I don’t feel that. I do feel relief at seeing my friends in here.” And then in what would have been the height of rudeness for any other noble to try, Danel moved his gaze from Desmond, past the king and the empty seat of the Queen, and settled on Bezel. And his smile shifted into something warmer. “Your highness, Bezel. It is so good to see you again.” He broke his gaze away and searched the room until he saw the Knight, and his smile increased. “You and your guardian both. Are you well, sir knight?”

The Knight, not trusting himself to speak, merely nodded once and allowed Danel to look back to Bezel. “And you, your highness?”

“Very well. Doing my best not to be bored.” The princess explained, rolling her eyes with a good-natured smile of her own. “How is your mother, Danel? Is she in good health?”

“Nothing can keep  _ Ama Yagi _ down for long, you know that.” Danel laughed heartily. “She has taken to her former duties as Steward of the province quite well, and she is loved by the people. She regrets that she could not come with, but she did ask me to inquire if you have been keeping up with your healing lessons.”

“Not as much as I should like to.” Bezel confessed. “There is little call for it up here.”

“Well, then perhaps to make sure my mother isn’t scowling at me for letting you slack off when I return home, we should seek out a training hall so your knight and I might cross swords again. Then you can patch us both up, call us ridiculous and foolish as all warriors are to the healers who have to take care of them, and I won’t have to lie to my dear mother about it.”

Bezel laughed, bright and airy, and the sound carried in the room, startling everyone. Nobody more than the Mage King, who stared at his daughter as if she’d grown a second head. Like he didn’t recognize her.

Perhaps he didn’t, the Knight realized. How often had Bezel ever been encouraged to laugh and smile and  _ be herself _ in his presence?

“Oh, that sounds wonderful.” And in the height of impropriety, Bezel stood from her chair, smoothed out a nonexistent wrinkle along the front of her dress, and bowed to her father. “Your majesty, I will be borrowing Baron Rusla for a time so he and my guardian can have themselves a little contest.”

Nobody was supposed to leave the throne room, save at the bidding of the king. And yet his daughter the princess now brazenly made to do so, not as a request, but stating it as fact. 

The Mage King’s face purpled. “The new baron has yet to make his report…” He began, and Bezel sighed, interrupting him, which was  _ another _ impropriety stacked on top of what was a rapidly growing list in the past two minutes.

“Danel.” Bezel said, turning away from her father to stare at the new Baron in his 20’s. “Have you and your Steward finished the census of your people and discovered how many are missing?”

“An exact number has been impossible to pin down, but with the help of Knight Commander Sloane and the 242nd RRD, we believe that around 2600 of my people are lost to us forever, sold into slavery to the outsiders from beyond our world. Given how many ruined villages we have discovered and based on our estimates of their populations before they were attacked and burned, it is as close a number we can attribute to the predations of the former baron and the Mage Knights who forswore their oaths for Gobeas’s plans.”

Outright gasps of surprise swept the Court at that, and the Knight flickered his gaze up to the Mage King, who now had his lips pressed together tightly. So. He’d been keeping  _ that _ little detail under wraps, after all. And Bezel and Danel Rusla had just upended the apple cart.

“To say nothing of how many other people from  _ other _ provinces were drawn into the web.” Bezel uttered darkly. “I will make separate inquiries with Knight Commander Sloane as to his progress later on. For now, though, how does Ganarus fare?”

“We are rebuilding. The mines are still empty. For now, there is little we can offer Atlantis save what can be grown, although I will be happy to turn over the ill-gotten wealth kept by Gobeas in Khav from his schemes. I can scarcely look at it all, and have been keeping it locked away in chests, rather than decorating the Baronial Estate.”

Bezel nodded and started down the steps. “Perhaps it is time that some of that ill-gotten wealth was sold off and used to help with the rebuilding of your province and the restoration of your people. I am certain that there are  _ reputable _ traders here in Atlantis who, after the surtax collected in the King’s name, would still be able to pay quite handsomely for the precious metals and gemstones.”

“I will defer to your wisdom in the matter, your highness.” Danel told her graciously, and the Knight didn’t fail to notice how the way he said  _ her _ title was with more warmth and respect than he had ever said  _ your majesty _ to the king. 

Bezel stopped at Danel’s side and looked back up to her father. “Is there anything else that you require of the baron at this time, your majesty?” She asked coolly.

The Mage King, unable to bring himself to speak, merely shook his head left and right.

 

Bezel smiled, turned, and took Danel by the arm, walking him down the carpet. She glanced to the Knight, and he stepped out of his place in the lined courtiers and fell in step behind her, three paces away as usual.

“I need to brush up on my  _ Ruscovy, _ Danel. I hope you can find it in your busy schedule while you are up here to fit in some language lessons for myself and my brave guardian.”

“Your highness, I would be happy to.” Danel chuckled.

 

They left the intrigues and the whispers of the Court behind them, and the Knight at last felt as though he could breathe again.

 

*B*

 

For Bezel, being back on Atlantis was like shoving all the best parts of herself into a box and only ever taking them out in a dark room when the door was shut. It had been six months of living up on Atlantis, being  _ stuck _ in expectations and behaving like a princess was supposed to before Danel Rusla, a baron at last (And that meant that even after all of his posturing and angry words, her father had actually  _ listened to her _ for once) had appeared in the Court. 

She had been so  _ tired _ of acting like the perfect princess, of not being herself. For too long, all she’d had to keep her sane was her training with her Knight, her research into the leylines of Terra, her experiments in artificing, and the all too rare moments when she could be alone with her Knight. The trips to the shelter run by the Geenes were nowhere near as often as she would have liked, but she loved every one of them. As Ella, she could be herself. She could hug her Knight, even kiss him, and nobody said a word even if the Geenes both smiled and chuckled good-naturedly. 

The names were false, but the love between them was real. She was always feeling pulled in a dozen different directions, and the only ones that she ever seemed to care about were the ones where her Knight stood beside her. When they were helping people.

At least in her morning training, as she spun her Arocan-made staff around herself and imagined an opponent whose blows she was deflecting, the thoughts of the day could disappear. Her Knight had insisted that she keep up her training, and she had taken to sneaking out before he could reach her door some mornings just so she could have some time to herself before his regimen began in earnest. 

Thinking back to the fight with Finna Keral kept her going. The way that he’d used his mana not just to throw blasts of power, but to conjure up a second sword of pure magic. The way that he’d reinforced his body so that he could match and surpass the speed of her Knight, even when he was augmented. The way he’d effortlessly dismissed that manablade to cuff her upside the head and give her a concussion.

Before Ganarus, before Danel and Yagi and Gobeas and Keral, Bezel had thought of combat in two categories; Dueling and actual fighting. Dueling had been what Instructor Drake had taught, and he had been soundly beaten by her Knight. Her Knight practiced actual fighting, striking blows to wound and to kill. What Keral had added to the equation, Bezel realized, was sleight of hand and misdirection.

Channeling mana into her staff as she spun it, Bezel tore her hand away and held it aloft, keeping the length of reinforced wood spinning in midair as her aura encased it. With a sharp inhalation, and imagining a host of foes in front of her suddenly surprised by her ability to defend as she called up another spell, Bezel slammed her shoe into the floor and scattered a pulse of mana out and away from her, blue tinged with pink, that would have knocked any foe in front of her off-balance. It went for fifteen feet and then dissipated.

As she caught her breath, the sound of slow and deliberate clapping made her turn about and stare. Her Knight never clapped like that to anything she did, and it wasn’t him standing in the doorway of the combat training hall now. It was her brother Jorran, the middle child, who leaned against the doorframe and smiled a not quite right smile as he watched her. 

“Jorran.” She said to him, respectful though not very gracious. Because he had never been all that gracious to her growing up, or respectful. He’d never really played with her or looked after her, and when he roped her into games it was always an excuse to shove her to the ground and laugh as he ran off to be with Desmond and the other boys.

“That was quite a show you put on last week with that new baron, sister. You got  _ close _ to the rustics while you were gone.” Jorran said. “Tell me, did you learn to fight from Danel?”

He was goading her, and Bezel turned away, grabbing her staff and releasing the minor spell that kept it aloft. “My guardian trained me, for the most part. But Danel is a capable warrior.”

“So I was told.” Jorran mused. “You’re here quite early today. Ordinarily, your training sessions with your knight protector are a little later. But I can understand why you would wish to train beforehand. With a technique as sloppy as yours, I would not wish anyone else to see it either.”

Her hand clamped down on her staff, and Bezel breathed in softly and slowly. That was all Jorran ever seemed good for, in her experience. He was a bully who thrived on making others feel miserable, belittling their talents and abilities. That he was a capable warrior in his own right only made it worse. Were he less skilled, someone would have put him in his place and chalked it up as a ‘training accident’ long ago.

“If you wish the use of the room, brother, you need only ask for it.” She told him curtly. “There’s no need for you to go about your usual routine of insults with me; I no longer care what you think.” She turned for the exit and made to walk past him, but Jorran shifted his weight and barred her path.

His eyes narrowed. “You think you are better than me now, sister?”

“I am 14 and a half. You are 17.”

“Almost eighteen now.” He pointed out with a growl.

“Exactly.” Bezel waved a hand at him. “Your  _ ability _ is not the topic here. You have trained for far longer than I have. You are  _ expected _ to take over the command of the Mage Knights when our brother Desmond ascends the throne.”

“And yet, now members of the Court whisper otherwise.” Jorran said, gesturing for her to step back. “Do you have your eyes set on the role of High General, sister?”

“That is your aspiration, brother. Not mine.” Bezel narrowed her eyes, wondering what he was driving at. So members of the Court gossiped. They did little else, what did it matter to her? “Now step aside.”

“Defend yourself.” Jorran said, and with a flicker of blue light from his eyes, he summoned one of the blunted training swords along the wall to his hand. 

Bezel flinched. “I am  _ not _ going to fight you.”

“Then it’ll be just like old times, won’t it sister?” Jorran grinned. Then he charged at her her in a burst of mana-fueled speed that made her eyes go wide, and she snapped her staff up right in the nick of time before he could slam the blunted blade down across her clavicle. It still forced her back a couple of steps, and Jorran laughed once as he yanked his sword away. “Wow, look at that. You actually learned how to block.” His eyes gleamed a dark blue, the color of the ocean under moonlight.  _ “Now show me something else.” _

If Bezel had thought that she had been working herself hard before, it was nothing compared to the brutal form of ‘sparring’ that Jorran brought to bear. She tried yelling at him to stop, and he scowled. She stuck to only deflecting his blows and it made him scream at her to hit him. She was shaken, more shaken than she’d been when Finna Keral kept trying to kill her, because at least in that fight she hadn’t been alone, and she  _ knew _ that there was no other way to stop the man but to end his life. But here, in her home? Against her brother?

“You go wandering off into the wilderness for a month and suddenly you think that you’re better than the rest of us?” Jorran snarled, slamming his sword against her staff and then sliding it down the shaft. The Knight had tried that trick before, and as the blade forced the angle in, she swept the far end of it towards his skull, forcing Jorran to evade and jump backwards from her. He only laughed at the maneuver and lowered the point of his blade, beckoning at her. “What do  _ you _ know of putting down insurrections? What do you know of war?”

“More than you think!” Bezel snapped back at him,  _ tired _ of being pushed around and belittled by him, tired of being dismissed as just a silly girl. “I have suffered and  _ bled _ to keep the people of Terra safe!”

“And what have you done for Atlantis lately, digging around in the mud?” He snapped back. “Your head’s full of strange ideas, Bezel! There’s a reason  _ we’re _ up here and  _ they’re _ down there! We’re  _ better  _ than they are!”

He actually believed that line, the logical fallacy that Atlantis used to justify the state of the world, with everyone Below subservient to the people who lived above them. It enraged Bezel like nothing else, and she screamed and finally let her aura explode with power. It flowed around her, blue shot through with blazing pink, and to Jorran’s own aura of dark ocean blue it outclassed him in raw mana potential alone.

In potential, but not in the use of it to cause harm. After she caught him in the midsection and knocked the wind out of him in one hit, Jorran rallied and used his own mana to reinforce his body and to enhance his speed, wearing her down until he caught the end of her staff after one wild swing in his free hand and brought the pommel of his blade down on her wrist. She screamed again, in pain this time, and crumpled to the ground cradling the broken hand to her chest. The staff fell to the ground and rolled up to his boot, and he pressed the toe down on it. 

Then he kicked it back to her. “Pick it up.” He hissed, and Bezel stared at him through pain-blurred eyes. “You want to fight? You want to run around in the  _ dirt _ with all of your mud-grubbing friends and pretend that you aren’t the princess of the entire world? Then  _ pick. It. Up.” _

Bezel, shaking like a leaf, could not. But as Jorran stood sneering over her, someone else did. The staff was surrounded by a green aura, then it jerked roughly through the air away from her, forcing Jorran to dodge away with a surprised grunt.

It didn’t fly unerringly, but it flew with purpose, until it slapped into the gloved palm of her Knight. And his eyes were burning.

“And here I thought a royal prince would have better things to do than abuse his younger sister. I can tell by the look on her face that you are not welcome here. You have interrupted her highness’s scheduled training time, and have injured her as well. Leave. Now.”

Jorran’s face purpled. “You forget your place,  _ knight.  _ You should hardly dare to speak to me without first being addressed.”

“My  _ place _ is between you and her.” Her Knight snapped. “I am her protector, and you have put her safety at risk.”

Jorran leveled his blade. “So. You will put yourself to the hazard to save her?”

Bezel inhaled sharply, going dizzy as she remembered all of the times he had. How he always did. She remembered him being stabbed through and bleeding out on her, and bit back a scream.

Her Knight just smiled, calmly set her staff to lean up against the wall, and then drew one of the blunted practice blades.

“I am her Knight.” He told Jorran firmly. “It is what I was made for.”

 

The fight that followed would be mutually agreed on by both Jorran and her Knight as a ‘training duel’ that got out of hand. Bezel could only watch as Jorran, taller and stronger and more vicious than her love, laid into him with ferocious strikes and callous blows. For his part, her Knight never gave an inch and never showed weakness. Jorran ran on scorn and indignation, but the glow of her Knight’s marbled green and blue aura burned with even stronger emotions. Rage, protectiveness. 

Fury tempered by years of suppressing how he truly felt.

What her Knight lacked in raw power and the sturdier build that Jorran carried from his age, he made up for in his emotional focus and his experience. The result was a knockdown drag-out fight where neither was able to land a truly crippling blow to end the fight, but one where they both ended up with black eyes, cut lips, and bruises over much of their bodies. In the end, Jorran spat a glob of blood on the floor and stormed off, his sword arm hanging strangely after a solid blow to the shoulder joint that must have struck in just the right spot, and her Knight limped to her side on a badly bruised or possibly broken ankle.

“Why did you do that?” She whispered to him, as she put her healing skills to work, delicately sending her mana into his body and focusing her  _ Intent _ as Ama Yagi had taught her, willing it to heal along more natural pathways. 

Smiling thinly through the pain, her Knight let her pull his head onto her shoulder. He let her cradle him close as she worked over the aches and the damage he’d taken protecting her from Jorran.

“You know why, Bezel.” He sighed.

“I told you, if your life is mine, you don’t get to throw it away for me.”

“I know.” Her Knight agreed. “But did you think I could just stand there and watch him brutalize you?”

“He’s older than you! He could have hurt you!”

He laughed at that. “He really couldn’t have.”

“Stop laughing, you dolt. I’d believe you if you weren’t bleeding.”

“You’re too brave for your own good sometimes.”

“...It’s how my mother wanted me to be.” He said, and his hand settled over the locket hidden beneath his shirt.

Bezel closed her eyes and kept stroking her hands over his leg, sending her healing spell into his aches. “She wanted you to be happy.”

He slumped against her a little more at that. “I  _ am _ happy.”

 

*K*

 

_ Atlantis _

_ Over Aroca _

 

There were other aftershocks that followed, as fall lengthened and winter set in over the northern hemisphere of Terra. The Knight found that they were all unexpected, but he was nowhere near as surprised by them as the other members of Bezel’s family, or her father’s advisors. He could at least understand  _ why _ things changed in her passing. To the rest of them, it came as a shift that they had no grasp on.

With only her first array of leyline readings to rely on and with one of the 242nd RRD’s far-messaging mages on standby, Princess Bezel stood before a small assembly. Amused-looking royal knights, far-messagers, royal alchemists and even two of her father’s advisors were present, old and sour-faced men who seemed none too thrilled to be standing for a presentation on  _ ‘Principles and Improvements on Far-Messaging Magic for the Benefit of all Terra.’ _

It took every bit of the Knight’s impressive self-control to corral his face into an impassive mask while he stood vigilantly nearby. He watched as Bezel brought the soft murmurs of low conversation to a stop with an upraised hand and a chime of magic-produced noise.

“Alchemists, mages, servants of Atlantis and her people.” Bezel greeted them politely. The advisors, noblemen both, shifted in their stances and scowled at not being addressed individually. Bezel didn’t give them so much as a second glance. “I welcome you here today, and thank you for coming. There are not quite as many of you as I would have hoped for.” Her emerald eyes sized them all up. “By the looks on your faces, I can tell that many of you feel as though this is a waste of time, and I am sorry you feel that way. I will let my results speak for themselves, and spare myself the effort of butting heads with those of you who feel that a  _ princess _ has no business requesting their presence.” What went unspoken, the Knight knew, was  _ ‘And by the time I am done you will all be eating your words and telling everyone who ignored my non-compulsory invitation that they missed something terribly special.’ _

When nobody else said a word in reply, Bezel pressed on. “Far-Messaging magic is a specialized field of study among those who possess the ability to manifest and utilize mana. It is a critical means of communication in Atlantis, and between Atlantis and the various divisions of Mage Knights stationed on Terra. We all know the current theory behind it. One mage trained in far-messaging focuses their magic and throws out a thread of it, reaching out until they establish a connection with another far-messaging mage at some point distant. The amount of power a far-messaging mage possesses affects their range, just as with the emergency beacons possessed by the RRD. Theoretically, any mage is capable of this act of throwing a line of their power out into the world, but what separates a far-messager from others is their ability to make that transmission more than just noise, to imbue thoughts and sensory information into it. The most skilled far-messagers are even capable of routing what they see and hear and projecting it as a moving image with sound instead of mere words or a still visual impression. Once received by a far-messager on the other end of their call, this can be interpreted by that mage or, with additional training, directed into a visual projection spell and a ‘speaker’, a box marked with runes of sound projection that makes the words of the far-messager casting the call, or the words of the person utilizing that far-messager, into audible sounds.”

She paused then, and the Knight scanned the crowd, seeing that every face looked bored. Because this was known to them, their faces betrayed their silent thoughts, and why was she going over it?

Bezel drew in a breath and continued.

“Far-Messaging, as it exists today, is a wasteful form of spellcasting. It leaves the casters drained and exhausted from both the power the method requires and the concentration to sustain the connection and transmit and receive. A far-messager is quite literally  _ punching a hole _ between them and the receiver to make it work.”

Bezel hung on that for two seconds, and the Knight straightened up a little more. The lecture was done.

Time for her to upend the world again.

 

“There is a better way.” Bezel smirked, and with a gesture and a whispered word, the small globe of the world beside her shimmered, and a larger projection of it cast in blue hues and burning pink lines appeared. It was focused in on the continent of Aroca. “We  _ talk _ about leylines. They are the storied and almost mythical rivers of magic that we acknowledge the existence of, but which we never study. Leylines are a phenomenon that we have taken for granted. As a part of my interrupted tour of Below, I had the opportunity to take readings and measurements of the ambient magic about Aroca. I would have liked to do the same for Euros and Asa and the unsettled lands beyond, and it is my hope that I can still. When a mage calls on the power of the world’s magic, they do so by accessing the leylines.” She gestured up to the hovering magical image of Aroca above the audience, held still while great pulsing lines that seemed to flow like interconnected rivers captured their attention. “Some of the leylines are stronger than others, more massive. Though I lack a complete picture, I am certain that the greater lines here, the ones that reach to the Lantean Ocean and to Euros and to Asa are part of a greater web; a network of leylines around the world. The leylines are the rivers of power we take from when we call on more mana than we ourselves possess. They are the rivers of power that Atlantis drinks from to empower its ancient enchantments that keep this small continent aloft. They are the wellsprings which power its great and terrifying weapons when the Mage Knights meet a challenge that cannot be bested by their strength of arms alone.”

Bezel slowly shook her head left and right. “We acknowledge the existence of leylines. We see them as power, power that can be siphoned from as one draws water from a stream or a river. But rivers can carry boats. Oceans can carry ships. And fish swim in streams. It is our  _ perspective _ and our  _ Intent _ that limits us. We waste so much power and effort in forcing a message across the world. Why, when the leylines are  _ there _ and can carry it for us?”

She had a satchel at her side, the same satchel he had grown so accustomed to seeing her wearing when they had been on their journey, and from it he watched as she drew out another strange artifice of hers. It was a stone ring of worked granite that he had watched her craft over long days. Laced with metal mana-latticework and inscribed with Atlantean runes around the edge, the center of it was a perfectly clear hemisphere of enchanted glass and a resonance chamber built into the grooves around it.

“A disclaimer for the audience. I am not a far-messager.” Bezel said with a wry smile, earning, at last, a few chuckles from the attendees. “It has not been a part of my training, as it was not for my brothers Desmond or Jorran. Why would we ever need to bother learning the tricky art of it, after all, when we would always have  _ servants _ to do the work for us?” She deadpanned, and the laughter became more forced. She rolled her eyes and pressed on. “To my great fortune, I love reading and working out puzzles, so I taught myself the basics of the Art. Not enough to cast it and maintain the concentration necessary as our more skilled far-messagers in the corps can, but enough to  _ runecraft the spells _ into a piece of artifice that should, if I have prepared it correctly, do it for me after a small charge of my own power.”

Bezel had studied the beacon that Knight Commander Sloane had given them to death before they had needed it in Ganarus to stop the slave trade with the Surgalans. She had inhaled every text on the subject of far-messaging when she hadn’t been trying to continue her research on channeling mana through artificing alone or working on the problem of why Atlantean healing magic was so much less precise and brute-forced than the technique Ama Yagi had shown her. There was a sliver of doubt left in her as she set it on the stage, and he could see it. He wondered if anyone else could, and hoped they didn’t.

For all that she had learned, and was still learning, this was the first attempt. This was her experiment to prove that her theory worked. The device did, at least.

“For this experiment, I will be using this as my far-messaging substitute; A  _ Sending Stone _ as I’ve taken to calling it. Atlantis is currently above Aroca on its trek around Terra, and far beneath us near the center of the continent, but short of the great forests that dominate much of it, is the camp headquarters of the 242nd Rapid Response Division under Knight Commander Alastair Sloane. Much of that unit is currently deployed elsewhere, but there is always a far-messager on duty at their main camp. I will be attempting to reach out to him, using my Sending Stone to do the work of both transmitting and receiving the message...and I will do so using the leylines of Aroca to route my call.”

There were a few laughs, but they were shaky and not as mean-spirited. The Knight felt his heart swell at their uneasiness. These warriors and alchemists and  _ nobles _ who thought that they always knew better than her were standing on shaky ground, holding their breath and wondering for the first time if a young woman who did things because she felt it her duty might be right after all.

Bezel channeled a bit of her mana into the Sending Stone, whispered a word, and set it on the small stage in front of her. The runes around its edge glowed brightly in blue light shot through with streamers of pink.

Then the clear crystal hemisphere at its center lit up, and Bezel smiled.

“It has connected to the nearest leyline beneath us.” Then the runes started to flicker on and off in sequence, then their color shifted to pure white, and Bezel laughed. “It’s found our distant far-messager. Hello, is this the 242nd Base Camp?”

There was silence for several seconds, and then the Sending Stone’s center hemisphere took on a pulsing quality, thrumming with the cadence of the message returned to it. A voice echoed from the small grooves of the Sending Stone’s speakers ringed around that center crystal.

_ “It is. Far-Messager Lam Kese speaking. Wonderful to hear from you again, Princess Bezel.” _

Bezel was so ecstatic that she yelled in Arocan.  **_“It works!”_ **

Knight Kese laughed on the other end, his amusement carried through the Sending Stone perfectly.  _ “And I see you haven’t forgotten your Arocan.”  _ He complimented her in Atlantean.  _ “One moment, I’ve got a few other people here with me. I just need to set up the speaker…” _

There was another pause, and then the crystal at the heart of the Sending Stone sent up a cone of light, and an image of several people, not only mage knights but the Arocans who kept the camp functioning and intact manifested, blinking back at Bezel as her grin only widened. 

“Knight Kese, how do you feel? Is the strain any less than usual?”

_ “There is some improvement, yes.”  _ The far-messager on the other end of the call said, genuinely surprised by it.  _ “The spell isn’t fighting me like it usually does. In fact, it feels like it’s flowing more naturally.” _

“We’re piggybacking on one of the leylines in Aroca.” Bezel explained. “Of course, I don’t know if the strain would be greater if we were bouncing it around the leyline web more, instead of just using a single strand of it, but…”

_ “Your highness?”  _ Knight Kese interrupted, chuckling slightly.  _ “I know that this is very exciting and all, but there was some talk when we realized what you were planning. There are others here who had something to say if this experiment worked.” _

“Oh. Right, of course.” Bezel forced herself to a stop, breathed in, and nodded. “Sorry, this is just all so very exciting. I welcome you, people of Aroca, to our assembly here. Please, go ahead. You had a message to share with Atlantis?”

**_“Our message is not for Atlantis, Princess of our Hearts.”_ ** The eldest Arocan in the assembly by the far-messaging knight declared in his native tongue, the dark wrinkles around his eyes made more by laughter than sorrow.  **_“It is for you.”_ **

Bezel blinked, and many in the assembly did so as well, not comprehending what the man had said to her. Why would they bother to learn any language but Atlantean, after all?

**_“I am listening.”_ ** Bezel replied in his tongue, and the Knight swallowed, sensing that this moment carried weight.

The old Arocan breathed in a rheumatic wheeze, and then spoke as steadily as he could.  **_“I was of Dapana, and my daughter worked here. You came and saved us during the Earth-Shake. And then you went on to save the people of a distant land from slavery...and more of our people came home. Stories are told of your bravery, and your courage. You care for the people of Aroca, for the people of Terra.”_ ** On shaky legs, he bent down and fell to one knee.

The other Arocans did the same.

**_“If you ever have need of us, Great Bezel, call for us. Call, and we will come.”_ **

 

Bezel swallowed and tears pricked at the corners of her eyes. “Please, stand. You don’t have to. I don’t deserve it.”

The old Arocan laughed as he rose back up, kissed his knuckle and raised it up to touch his forehead.  _ “What one deserves, not always what one receives. Be well, princess.” _ He said, reverting to stilted Atlantean.

Bezel’s lips moved, but no words came. No words would, the Knight realized. He walked over, scooped up the Sending Stone and deactivated it, ending the call.

A stunned audience whose world had been upended in five minutes stared up at him and the artifact in his hand, and then to Bezel.

“Her highness thanks you all for coming.” The Knight told them, and then walked over to Bezel and guided her with a hand on her shoulder to walk away. 

In the silence they left behind, the world changed just a little bit more.

 

*B*

 

A week after that dramatic presentation, Bezel found herself ‘invited’ to work alongside the royal alchemists whenever she had time available. It was an affirmation of the value of her work. The promise of a new kind of far-messaging that was less prohibitively draining was eagerly embraced by the corps as well. The first unit to volunteer as the testers for her Sending Stones was unsurprisingly the 242nd RRD, but the major problem of a lack of knowledge about the arrangement of the world’s leylines still remained.

Three days after the 242nd RRD volunteered, a squad from  _ every _ branch of the RRD was recruited to travel the world with duplicates of the sensor Bezel had been using on her journey. It was just a matter of making them, and with the help of the alchemists, Bezel was able to make further improvements in their sensitivity and scope. 

Nine months after her 14th birthday, the Mage Knights dispatched one flying squadron after another to criss-cross the globe and take scans of available mana to make a full, global map of Terra with as many accurately placed leylines as they could manage. Until that was done, there was little else to be done on the Sending Stones project, so Bezel again petitioned her father to allow her to travel back Below, and continue her tour of the provinces.

Mage King Volkas Lantea refused her, but offered a caveat. She would be allowed to do so when she turned 15, provided that she continued to prove herself responsible in the meantime. He also reminded her that when she turned 15, she would be old enough to be Courted properly by the interested nobles of the world. She didn’t care for it, and neither did her Knight. It was something neither tried to think of.

 

They still kept sneaking out into the outer district of Atlantis on his days off, with Bezel finding ‘Ella’ to be a mask that was easy to wear. There had been so much of a crossover between how she was as Ella and how she had been down on the surface. Ella was who she was when there were no expectations to her behavior, when there was no title tacked onto her name, and her station and her magic didn’t matter. 

The Geenes had started out running a shelter, but after what was now a few years of that, they had become a force in the neighborhood that others respected and looked to. With the need for slightly better housing being something that everyone needed, some of the days that Ella and her attractive royal knight boyfriend would have spent dishing up bowls of soup and bread were instead spent fixing up old shacks, reinforcing roofs and walls, and making them warmer and cozier for families.

Mrs. Geene stopped Bezel as she returned from the shelter to their newest refurbishment project, a load of hastily prepared sandwiches in tow. “Oh, Ella dear?”

“Yes, Mrs. Geene?” Bezel dutifully asked the older woman, tucking a bit of red hair back underneath her hood. 

“I’ve told you, dear girl, call me Willys. I’m sure even m’husband Sam’s gotten after your handsome man for being so formal around him.” Mrs. Geene sighed. “It’s gettin’ a bit late in the day, and I know that you and your knight like to scurry back to the castle ‘afore it gets too dark. He should be up on the roof hammering away, so let him know that he can stop for the day.”

“If you’re certain.” Bezel shrugged.

Willys Geene opened her mouth, hesitated, shook her head, and pressed on. “You know Ella, I’ve noticed that with all the times that you’ve come along with him on his day off to help, neither of you are ever that anxious to go back. You, more than him.”

Bezel blinked at the eerily on-point observation and averted her eyes. “It should be wonderful, to live there and work there. But most days...Most days, it feels far more confining.”

“For him, or for you?”

“Can’t it be both?” Bezel asked, smiling sadly. “That first day he brought me along, he didn’t want to bring me. I wondered where he went when he wasn’t being the princess’s guardian, and blackmailed him into taking me with.” Willys drew in a breath, and Bezel turned and looked at the woman, frowning when she saw her wider eyes and stance. “Is something wrong, Willys?”

“No. Nothing.” Mrs. Geene quickly said, shaking her head. “So. That first day, you didn’t know what he left the castle to do?”

“I didn’t. He wasn’t bothered by the sight of this all, though. He said he grew up around here.”

“And you’re...um. You came from a family that was more well off then?”

“I didn’t know.” Bezel confessed. “He opened my eyes, bringing me to you all.”

“So why do you keep coming back, then?” Willys prodded her gently.

Bezel looked the woman in the eye. “Because I can do something to make things better. He told me not to get angry about the things I couldn’t change; it was something his mother always said to him. But this is something I  _ can _ change.” 

Willys smiled. “You both have been so helpful in changing the lives of the people here for the better. I have no doubt that you will continue to do so.” She took the basket of food from Bezel and gave her a gentle nudge, then a pair of sandwiches. “There. For you and for your lover.”

Bezel felt her ears burn. “He’s not my…” She started, then sighed and turned away when Willys Geene just laughed softly and nudged her away again. Bezel went around to the back of the shack that her Knight and the others had been working on and found him coming down the ladder, shirtless and glowing under a thin sheen of sweat. And when he saw her, he startled instantly.

“Your...Ella.” He corrected himself, biting his lip as he caught her staring at his bare chest. “Sorry. It was warm work.” And the day had been a slightly warmer one than usual up on Atlantis. He wiped himself down with a thin towel and then went over to where his shirt and his belongings had been left alongside those of the other workers. “Is it time to eat?”

“Time to leave.” Bezel told him, handing him one of the sandwiches once he was dressed and wearing his sword again. “Willys said we could leave early. It felt more like she was pushing me away, though.”

Her Knight looked at her. “And you don’t want to return just yet.”

“Do you?” She countered bitterly. 

He thought about it, nodded once, and then motioned for her to come along. “I know a place we can go.”

He took them even further out into the outer district, what the rest of the island’s population sometimes derisively called the slums. They ate their sandwiches as they walked in companionable silence, and she felt at peace with it all. A year ago, she would have been concerned, or afraid. But too much had happened in a year, and Bezel thought she understood the world so much better now. And her Knight was at her side, and would let nothing harm her.

Some minutes later, they came to a stop in front of what looked to be another shack like any other in the run-down neighborhood. Bezel lowered her hood and turned to him as the sun dipped lower, and blue skies started to turn orange. There was a sad, twisted smile on his face, and he walked up to the front door and jiggled the handle, somehow undoing the lock. 

“What are you doing?!” Bezel hissed. “You can’t just break into someone’s house!” When she went to follow him and drag him out, he stepped to the side and let her stare inside of the small shack, which was abandoned and empty of any sign of habitation.

“This was my home.” He explained, and her heart lurched in her chest. “I found it again on the first day off I got after my reassignment as your guardian. Nobody ever moved in after we left.” He stepped aside and cast a globe of green light into the dwelling, making it hover up by the ceiling in the center of it. “You’ve asked about my life before. I never could find a good way to answer you.”

She nibbled at her lower lip, and he sighed and kissed her cheek. “I’ll be outside when you’re done.” Then he stepped back outside and left her to her thoughts.

Bezel walked around inside of the small shack, a hovel of cracked walls and a low ceiling, a one room hut that had somehow managed to house a mother and her young son. She could walk across the length of it in ten steps, and the bedroom and the living room were one and the same.

When she walked to what served as the kitchen, the cupboards were dusty but well cared for, and the dust rings marked where wooden cups and dishes had once rested. There was still a small tray of salt next to the sink, a stained dishtowel left hanging over the back of a chair. A leather pouch of soap crystals lay on the kitchen table, relics and trinkets left behind that had once belonged to a woman who struggled to give her son the best life, the best chance she possibly could. Relics that hadn’t gone with them when they moved to Banali City so she could try and make a better life for them.

She could see why her Knight never talked about his life before she stumbled into it, before he lost his mother and he nearly died saving Bezel’s. There was too much sadness here, and too many ghosts. The fatalism he carried had been burned into him early. Bezel could not blame him for not wanting to face it for very long. He kept his eyes forward and always looked ahead, hoping that it would be better than it had been before. With him standing beside her, Bezel thought, it just might be.

The only picture left of his mother was enspelled within the locket she had made for him, that he wore around his neck. Bezel closed her eyes and thought of that sad, gentle woman’s smile as her fingertips traced the surface of the table.

“He’s still brave.” She whispered into the empty air. “You would be so proud of him. I am.” It was the only consolation she could offer in the memory of that dead woman, and so she turned and left at last.

Outside, she looked around for him fruitlessly, turning left and right, and he finally took pity on her by speaking up.

“I’m up here, Bezel.” She looked up and found him sitting on the roof of the small shack, knees drawn to his chest and his eyes fixated on the spires of the royal palace at the center of Atlantis. 

A whispered spell put the wind beneath her, and she made a gentle leap up to land next to him. She took a seat beside him and leaned into him, then sighed when his arm came up and hugged her closer still.

“She loved you.” Bezel told him. 

Her Knight smiled. “We never had much. But she did everything she could.”

“I remember how she was sleeping the first day I met you.”

“She was always working. When she had the time to do things with me, they were always things that didn’t cost money. I didn’t see it when I was young, only figured it out later. But if she hadn’t...if we hadn’t been in the park that day…” He went still and closed his eyes, and she grabbed for his hand and squeezed it.

“But you were.” She whispered, not even wanting to think about a world in which she had never met him. A world in which she would have died in Banali City with her uncle and the rest of his family, a world where Zolim fell because he wasn’t there to stop The Liar. A world where she had never fallen in love with him. Such a world could not exist. She refused the thought of it. “You were. And we met. And you saved me. And I fell in love with you.”

He chuffed once, finally opening his eyes again. His eyes searched out the spires of the distant castle. “This was my favorite view when I was little. I would come and sit up here when I was too hungry to fall asleep, too wound up. Too mad at the world.” He pointed ahead. “I would look at that castle and imagine what my life would be like if my mother was richer. If we didn’t live here. I would imagine living in that castle, and I would be angry and jealous and I would wish for all the things I didn’t have.”

She nodded, not seeing the same things he did. To her, it was her home, and a prison, and a place that had become too used to complacency. But to a child who had nothing? She could see why he would look on it with envy, and she felt shame for her own view on it.

“We’ll make things better. We’ve changed things already. We’ll keep changing things.” She promised him.

He nodded, still staring at the castle.

She leaned into his side and stared at it as well. “Is it different now? Now that you live inside of it, is looking at it any less magnificent?”

Her Knight smiled. “No. It’s more now. Because you are there.”

Bezel gripped his hand tighter, and he squeezed it back, and they sat and watched the waning sunset pass over its gleaming surface.

 

*K*

 

Her 15th birthday came, and a tremendous ball was held in her honor. As part of the ceremony, Bezel was required to share one dance with every interested suitor. By the end of it, her feet were aching from the tight-fitting shoes she’d been required to wear over nearly two dozen dances with men that ranged from 16 in age to 42. Her eyes always drifted back to spy the Knight, standing still as a statue. He endured the farce as well as he could, feeling his hopes for a life with her drift away a bit at a time. These were the men that she would be promised to; men of wealth and power and significance. Men who came from ‘respectable’ families.

Men who knew nothing of the world Bezel yearned for, and the miracles she wanted to create.

At the end of the ball, Bezel was approached by her father for a quiet word hidden behind a silence spell, and then she limped in the direction of her bedroom. As soon as they were out of sight of the public, the Knight swept her up and carried her in his arms, and it was a sign of how tired she really was that she didn’t refuse the forward move, and only curled in tighter against him.

“My father said that I had held up my end of our bargain.” She told him quietly. “In a month’s time, I’ll be allowed to go down to the surface.”

“Not long after my birthday, then.” The Knight said, and she smiled her secret smile.

“You will be turning 16. What boon could I grant you, my Knight?”

He could think of so many things, things that he wasn’t allowed to ask for, to even  _ think _ about. And so with a sigh and a heavy heart, he went for the truth instead of the lies.

“What I want, your highness, you cannot give me.” She knew his face, knew when his smile was false and covered up sadness. The look on hers was enough of an indicator that she knew he was lying. Knew, and knew why, and then she let it go.

A week after her birthday, the first of the reports from the leyline scanning teams came in, pure, raw data in numbers and locations that Bezel compared to the results she had taken the year before in Aroca and frowned. The Knight, always at her side, instantly asked her what was wrong.

“This is different. These aren’t the results I got.” Bezel muttered. She looked back to the datapoints and frowned again. “Mine are from the spring last year. These readings...these were taken in what would have been the winter up further north in central Euros, short of the glaciers.” She shook it off and brought up her own data, whispering the words to the spell that put up a projection of her map of Aroca’s leylines, and then put up a second layer with the new data where the rivers of mana flowed a softer green over the existing ones of pink. 

The Knight stared at them. “They’re mostly in the same places, but..”

“Yes. Some of them are thinner in this new data. And some are wider.” 

“So the mana is...waxing and waning?” The Knight murmured. “How can that be?”

“I wish I knew.” She confessed, and quickly reached for paper, scribbling out new notes. “It could be that my readings were wrong, or inaccurate. The new instruments used by the scanning teams are more precise, after all. Or there could be some other phenomenon going on that we’re not seeing yet.” She folded the note and handed it to him. “Could you take that down to the far-messagers and have them send that out to our scanning teams abroad? It tells them to take their readings both in the spring or summer, and again in the fall and winter.” She paused. “It’s coming up on lunch.”

“Do you want me to bring you something?”

She rolled her eyes. “No. I’d like you to take a few hours for  _ yourself, _ sir Knight. It’s allowed. I’ve fairly run you ragged this morning between our training and all of this.”

“When do you wish me back?”

She smiled, looked around in the small, cramped space of her loaned workshop, then leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. 

“Later this afternoon. When you’re  _ bored _ again.” He couldn’t help but smile, and he bowed once before leaving her behind.

After dropping off her message with the royal far-messagers and ensuring that they would get the word out to all of the teams traveling the globe for leyline studies, he made his way down to the servant’s cafeteria, grabbed himself a tray with a bowl of the goat stew, a thick slab of cheese, a small loaf of brown bread and a berry tart. He went for his usual table in the back to be left alone, and dug in with the hunger that came from a morning well spent.

He was up to his last bites of bread and his tart left when a good half-dozen royal knights in their late teens to mid-20’s came in, noticed him, and came over to join his table. The Knight sighed as they sat down, still laughing about something, and moved to stand up.

“No, please, don’t leave on our account.” One of the older knights said to him. “You haven’t finished eating yet.”

“Besides, we don’t get a chance to see you that often.” Another knight said jovially. “Even when you’re sleeping down in the barracks, you almost never say a word.”

“I’m not very good at conversation.” The Knight said to them, trying not to growl the words out. “And I’m usually tired.”

“True. Assigned to that busybody princess instead of one of the proper princes, I feel for you, lad. I really do.” Another sighed.

“Although she’s becoming quite the looker these days, inn’t she?” A knight of Eurosian descent suggested with a waggle of his eyebrows, and the rest laughed lustily. 

“Yeah, wouldn’t mind ten minutes with her myself. Doesn’t seem fair that the nobles get to court her and rub their paws all over her and we just have to stand there and be tempted all the time.”

The Knight gripped his knife tighter, almost ready to jump to his feet and declare a challenge then and there. The oldest among them tempered the rest with a wave of his hand and narrowed eyes. “I’ll not be having any talk like that, you clowns. Whether you like her or not, she’s royalty and deserves nothing but your respect and admiration.”

“Well, she’s got my admiration at least.” One mumbled quietly, and there were fresh snickers.

“Well, enough about us.” Another knight in the pack asked after swallowing down some of his own meal. “You’re her guardian, right? Her protector, you go wherever she does. There’s talk she’s going on another tour of Below here soon, and that means you’d be going with her, right?”

“Those are my duties.” The Knight said stiffly.

“She ever make you run errands?” Another asked innocently.

“She ever make you do her a favor?” The next one chimed in next, a gleam in his eye.

“When you were down there before, were the two of you ever alone?”

“You’re a lucky sod, you know that? Get to go all over with that impressionable young thing, always looking up to you for her protection and her care…” The Eurosian knight drawled, stirring his cold tea. “Nobody else around to judge you, or to stop you if you felt like keeping her warm at night…”

“You know, she came back different.” The youngest of them, still three years the Knight’s senior mused. “Came back more like a woman than a girl.” He turned his eyes to the Knight, smirking. “How did it feel, making her a woman?”

 

The Knight was screaming inside of his head. He somehow found the ability to flash a grin at them all instead, and while they were chuckling, he reached forward as if to lightly punch the youngest guard in the arm, like so many of them did.

Nobody suspected that anything was wrong until his arm snapped lightning-quick at the last moment and grabbed at the back of the other royal knight’s skull. The Knight jerked him forward and smashed his face into the tray and the table, concussing him instantly. The next knight closest to the unconscious man yelled and went to grab at him. The Knight twisted his hand out of his grip, grabbed at his wrist hard, and set it down on the table.

Then he drove his serving knife through the man’s hand and buried it into the wood. As the injured knight howled and thrashed like a chained beast, the other four watched him warily and leaned away, expecting an attack. It was an attack that never came.

The Knight calmly stood, left his tray and the uneaten tart on it, and glared at them all.

“Insult her honor again, and I will do worse to you than I did to Instructor Drake.”

 

He walked away from the servant’s dining hall, the screams of the wounded man and the whispers of the rest following him. Not a one of the guard’s associates moved to chase after him.

 

*B*

 

Bezel’s work with the alchemists and the far-messaging mages was a boon in that it took up most of her time and confused her brothers further. Her father, if anything, had only become more distant, limiting the already sparse occasions where he had cause to interact with Bezel. The machinations of the Court held little interest to her, when there were the mysteries of the world to solve, projects to carry out, and the people of Terra that needed to be seen to.

She had been working on refining her ‘lifesight’ spell when a castle page boy came down and interrupted her, informing her that her presence had been requested in the throne room. With her Knight trailing behind her, she made her way up to the grand hall where her father held Court, building up a strong head of steam that she kept tightly bolted down. Going off ranting and raving would do her no favors, not when her father could then turn around and use it as an excuse to deny her the trip to the surface that she and her Knight so desperately needed.

She marched into the throne room, coming as she had been dressed in a long white coat and a knee-length blue skirt and blue blouse. Her hair hung behind her in the simplest braid that kept it out of her face. She stood ready to speak as she saw her father sitting up in his throne, but everything in her mind came crashing to a halt when she saw that the audience he was with was not some fair-weather nobleman or noble’s son come to ply her with empty platitudes and meaningless gifts, but a man and woman dressed in simple clothing that was still the finest they owned.

A man and a woman that had turned to the disturbance of her coming and now stared at her, and her Knight with wide open eyes filled with recognition. Because they were known to this couple. It was the Geenes, and they were staring into the faces of the lowborn knight who brought scraps from the castle, and the scullery maid Ella. Who wasn’t really Ella at all, their minds must have been racing with realization.

Bezel fought back the urge to blink wildly, or to show anything else on her face. Her two lives were colliding in front of her and it could ruin  _ everything _ if she didn’t keep it together. She put on the mask of the princess her father expected to see, pretended like she didn’t recognize Sam and Willys Geene, and did her best to ignore the small, strangled noise that her Knight made.

“You summoned me, my king?” She said, and there was the slightest twitch on the Mage King’s face when she refused to call him  _ father _ like he must have wished her to. She walked past the Geenes without looking at them, then took her seat which had been set up to the left of her mother’s empty throne. 

“Yes, Bezel. These two are residents of Atlantis, and the couple that runs the shelter which you have been sponsoring.” Volkas Lantea explained. “They have come at the behest of the royal accountants to share with us the news of their progress done in your name.”

“I see.” Bezel gripped the arms of her seat and spared a glance over to her Knight, who stood to the side of the carpet and watched the older couple with careful eyes. He was standing more stiffly than usual, something that only she and perhaps the Geenes would have been able to see. Her father seemed unaware of the tension he carried. “What are your names?”

“You don’t…” Willys started, but Samiel spoke over her, adapting a little more quickly than his wife had.

“Geene, your highness. Samiel Geene, and this is my wife, Willys.”

“It’s very good to see you.” Bezel got out, and at last allowed herself a smile. Around  _ them, _ the straight face just felt wrong. She had only needed an opening. “So tell me how things have been going since your shelter started receiving royal dispensation.”

“...much better, your highness.” Samiel kept himself on track. “Before, we were only able to feed the hungry and the needy with scraps donated by those sympathetic to our work, and we made do. But with the help, we were able to buy real food, improve the quality of our meals, and serve them more often. We even were able to afford to have a doctor come in and treat people who were ill. We have even started a program to refurbish some of the abandoned houses in the outer district, so that struggling families, especially those who have lost a parent or never had one, can have a place to live and a roof over their heads.” He glanced over to her Knight. “Of course...we still have people who volunteer, just as we do. As volunteers, we do not get paid to do this.”

Bezel nodded, sensing an opportunity with her father sitting close by, forced to listen to this all. “If you are not paid to do all this work in helping people, why do you do it, then?”

Willys frowned at the question. “Because it is the right thing to do. Because those that can help, should. Things will never get better if we don’t.”

Bezel’s smile widened. “I happen to agree with you, Mrs. Geene. Those that can help,  _ should. _ It is why I funded your mission.”

“Your highness…” Samiel said, hesitating.

“You may call me Bezel, if you like.” She told him, and he jerked his eyes up at her.

“Bezel.” Samiel corrected himself unsteadily. “How did you come to hear of us, hear of our work?”

“My Knight has the habit of listening to the gossip downstairs, and he heard of your shelter from some of the staff.” Bezel explained, crafting a lie on the fly that would keep her father from prying too deeply, which would support the deception of the Geenes merely being startled that such a young woman would do so much for them. “I was looking for a charity to support, but was cautious; I wanted it to go to a truly worthy cause, not one run by people who would simply take the money, praise the royal family, and leave the citizens of Terra to suffer. So when he told me that he might know of one, he went and investigated your shelter on one of his rare days off.” Bezel inclined her head slightly. “He was satisfied with what he saw, and I trust his judgment implicitly.” 

Sam nodded slowly, and she could see the gears turning in his head, trying to parse out how much of what she had said was truth and how much was deception. It settled into place uneasily, and he glanced over to his wife before turning to address Bezel again. “Then we owe you our thanks. You have helped many with your generosity.”

Bezel’s smile strained. “Could we do more?” She asked him, asked  _ them. _ In that moment, she let the refined quality of her voice, the airs of a royal fade away, and spoke as she would have if she were still pretending to be Ella. If they were not in the palace, but back at their shelter in the outer district. “There must be more you still want to do. More people you want to help. What do you need? What can I do to help?”

Willys made a noise eerily similar to a stifled sob, and when Bezel looked, she saw the woman covering her mouth with a hand while her tired eyes glistened.

“Daughter.” The Mage King said, trying to regain control of the conversation. “We are already spending a great deal of money on them, and…”

“Money that comes from the work of the citizens of Terra and Atlantis.” Bezel cut him off, turning and glaring at her father. “I know that you would  _ prefer _ if it was simply given back to the nobles so that you wouldn’t have to listen to them complain, but that’s the kind of thinking that led to Baron Gobeas thinking he could mistreat and use his people so horribly. We have an obligation to look to the welfare of our people, your majesty. I would sell every fancy dress in my closet if it meant I could keep the Geenes’ shelter going a little longer.”

 

The Mage King swallowed his words and just stared at her, blinking rapidly, some strange look on his face that she could not place. He settled back in his throne and looked away from her, and Bezel calmed her breathing and turned back to the Geenes, falling back into a long-deserved conversation over education and work programs for the children and the adults both, and possible improvements in their home development initiative.

Her father didn’t say another word for the rest of their visit.

 

*K*

 

_ Shun Province, Continent of Asa _

_ Capital City of Daogi _

  
  


The baron of Shun Province was unlike most other nobles that they had met during her tour. Though Domin Hal had inherited the role through his family, he had a much more egalitarian approach to rulership, and insisted on having an advisory council with its members chosen by the ten major townships within the province. His lands were peaceful, his citizens were educated, and he had a healthy respect and command of both the native Asans’ traditions and language. 

Bezel was struggling to learn it, and by the glow on her face, she was loving every minute of it.

 

With the Knight walking alongside her instead of behind, they made their way through the streets of Daogi, listening as vendors shouted out their wares and they were assaulted by wonderful smells of over a dozen different dishes being cooked up just along one avenue. And there was magic being used. Not the large, flashy spells that the mage knights and nobility of Atlantis preferred, spells of miraculous and sudden healing or lethal and overwhelming force. Here, there was a pottery maker who ran his hands around a glazed pot, hardening the lacquer in moments as the air beneath his hands hung shimmering like the air of a kiln. Over there, a worker behind the stand selling healing potions and poultices fed a low dose of magic into a glass container full of water and cut up plants, and it glowed a gentle crimson under his hands before a more solid green took its place. 

It was what Atlantis derisively would call ‘hedge magic’, and yet the Knight marveled at the skill with which they used their talents. He saw very few individuals in the market using magic who had an aura that approached his own, and nobody else came close to Bezel’s. But their movements and their Workings were so precise, so focused. Even with less raw power, they somehow were able to do so much.

“Do not feel too badly about having trouble with the  _ Weishun _ language, your highness.” Domin chuckled. “My mother insisted on me being tutored in it once I turned four, and I am fortunate enough to be fluent in it now because of that. I understand that like Atlantean, it is a little more difficult to master as one ages.” The middle-aged man tapped the side of his balding head of black hair, a mark of his shared heritage with the people of the land whose hair mostly ran in the same color, with occasional brown.

“I learned a fair share of Arocan, and my Knight still tutors me in it.” Bezel said to the man. “I was beginning to learn Ruscovy from a very dear friend of mine when I was recalled to Atlantis. I would like to at least muster greetings and simple questions in Weishun, if it is possible.”

“How much time do you have to linger?” Baron Hal laughed softly. He paused at a nearby stand, and there was a short but crisp conversation in the Asan tongue with the cook behind it. A few coins passed hands before three buns were lifted out of a steaming tray over a large pot of water and folded in waxy leaves. 

“Less than I would like, although at least there is a reason for it that I can feel less angry about.” Bezel explained. She accepted the steamed bun and handed the other to the Knight while Domin eagerly bit into his own, clearly used to the fare. His slightly rounded stomach was a trait he shared with others of the nobility, but the laugh lines and the ease at which he interacted with his people…Bezel dismissed her ruminations and kept talking. “On the side of my other duties, I’m something of an inventor and artificer. And a runecrafter, when it’s required. To my knowledge, nobody in the history of Atlantis ever bothered to map the leylines around Terra, or there was no record of such in the royal archives.”

“Ah. You seek to know the Great Rivers of Mana.” The baron hummed, and the Knight quirked an eyebrow at how he responded. As though he knew something more.

Bezel caught it too. “You know of the leylines?”

The baron shrugged, taking another bite and using the opportunity to order his thoughts. He glanced meaningfully at the buns in their hands, and the Knight reluctantly took a bite and then blinked as an explosion of salt and spice and a hint of sweetness in the filling went off in his tongue. Perhaps too much by itself, but surrounded by a blander covering of soft spongy bread, it served perfectly. 

“My studies were in rulership and finance, mostly. The study of magic and its more esoteric practices were not covered in any great detail. However, such things exist on the fringes of my people’s lives, and there are a great deal many wise women and shamans who claim to hear the voice, or voices, of magic. They do good work in the countryside where the Atlantean trained healers do not travel as often, and my mother believed in them. I leave them in peace to their practices, and let them ‘look after the land’ as they claim to.” He took another smaller bite, chewed it briefly, and swallowed with a regretful wince. “Would that I could offer them more protections beyond telling the regional knights assigned to the province to leave them be. The ones who have worked and lived here the longest accept them, but some of the newer recruits, especially over the past ten years…”

“You cannot order them to be left alone?” Bezel wondered. 

“I may  _ request, _ but in truth, I have very little authority over the knights that police my lands.” The baron said apologetically, catching the Knight’s eye. The Knight could only shrug and nod, and knew this as fact. The RRD was a separate entity from local affairs, working as an entity beholden only to the authority of Atlantis. And the local garrisons around the world were technically under the authority of the province’s ruling noble, but in terms of punishment and justice for infractions and internal matters, they could do little of any weight. The control Gobeas had exerted over the corrupt knights in his region had been based on mutual profit, and the tentative alliance between him and the now dead Knight Commander Keral. 

“You can order transfers.” The Knight pointed out quietly.

“And little else.” Domin Hal nodded, turning to Bezel who now gaped at him in disbelief. “You did not know, Princess Bezel?” She shook her head, and there was shame in her reddening face. 

Domin sighed. “My father often said that there were two kinds of nobles; there was the kind who sought only to please the Mage King and curry his favor, and those who looked after the welfare of the people. Under the former Mage King’s reign, and under your father’s, I see the first kind rising to prominence more often. They are the ones rewarded with additional lands, the ones who hold favor in the Court of Atlantis. The second is what my father was and I try to be. Our kind is slowly being eliminated.” He paused. “It isn’t so strange, really, that the lands which are troubled in Euros and Aroca are ones where the ruling nobles all fall into that first category. They forget where their power comes from. Yes, it comes from the king, but all power, first, comes from the people who put their trust and faith into their rulers. And when that trust is broken, then you have Zolim. And Banali City.” There was sorrow in his words and on his face, and he took a breath to dismiss it away.

 

The rounded man nodded at her, a bit of warmth coming back to his eyes. “And yet news spreads of a royal who risks her own welfare for her people. A princess that stopped a corrupt baron, a corrupt garrison from selling the people of Terra to the beasts from the stars. There were Asans among those you and your knight here saved, you know. Asans who told their stories to that knight commander friend of yours…”

Domin paused, and there was heat in his eyes. “...That evidence led to the arrests and convictions and  _ imprisonment _ of over two dozen knights in my province and in four others nearby. That was how deep the corruption ran, and there was  _ nothing _ I could do to stop it. I am glad that you can.”

He started walking along again, and the Knight and Bezel followed at a slower pace than before.

“You brought my people  _ home. _ A young woman from a small village whose family had come to me, begging for news of their daughter. Farmers seemingly taken from their fields.  _ Fathers _ and sons and even mothers.”

“We couldn’t save everyone.” Bezel said, a protest and an apology together. 

“You did more than most. And you still are.” Domin said. “This trip around the world you aspire to; It isn’t just so you can be a better advisor to your brother, is it?”

Bezel stiffened, and the Knight instantly set a hand to the hilt of his sword. Domin looked over his shoulder at them, smiled, and shrugged again. “I think, dear girl, you have more friends in more places than you know. I had friends in Dapana as well. Would that you were your father’s heir instead of your brother.”

The Knight’s heart thumped, because what Domin was casually uttering bordered so very close to  _ open treason.  _ Bezel swallowed, and shook her head, red hair spilling out behind her in a wide fan. “I don’t...I’m not doing this so I can rule.”

“No. But you care. And that is more than most of the royal family holds to their credit. You care, and you seek to bring people together. Isn’t that the reason behind these Sending Stones I have heard about?”

“You know of the Sending Stones?” The Knight questioned him, and Domin chuckled and kept on walking.

“I think that you might change the world, Bezel. Just promise me that you will never stop caring about the people, as you do now.” His head turned to them, he paused for a moment. “That neither of you will.”

“She has not yet.” The Knight insisted, and Domin nodded, tucking his thumbs under his belt, trudging along, and allowing them to finish their steamed buns in peace. Only when they were done and the leaves were discarded did he turn around and start walking backwards, so he could converse face to face while still going.

“You both are welcome to travel the breadth of the lands under my care.” He said with a smile. “Speak to the people, learn of their ways, and practice the Weishun tongue with those who speak it every day, if you wish. And if you are curious about their ways of magic, then I might suggest you look to the settlements further out in the wilderness, where the regional mage knights do not travel often.”

Bezel blinked at him. “You are...you’re very strange. For a noble. Most we’ve encountered have tried to butter me up, or to distract from the truth of what goes on in their lands.”

“Were you your brothers, I would do the same.” Baron Domin Hal said with a shrug. “But you are yourself. From the stories I have heard, from what I have seen, I can trust my people with you.”

He stopped and bowed. “So far as anyone else knows, you are to be my guest for the next week. I will keep your rooms prepared, but feel welcome to travel Shun Province if you wish to. May Mana keep you both well.” Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out the runed activation key for the skyskiff that they had used to come from his estate, and which was parked three streets away, and slipped it into the Knight’s hand with a wink.

Not waiting for empty platitudes, Baron Hal walked away, leaving them alone on the streets of Daogi. The Knight stared at his back as he disappeared into the crowds, then looked to Bezel.

“He is a very strange man.”

“Strange, yes.” Bezel agreed, a little dizzily. “But a good one, I think.”

The Knight hefted the skyskiff’s activation key. “He said a week.”

“He did.” Bezel nodded, and adjusted her satchel and her Arocan staff as a small grin came back to her face. “You want to get out of here?”

“Take some more leyline readings?” The Knight suggested innocently.

“Meet some new people?” Bezel added, grinning wider. “Will you come with me?” And she held out her hand to him.

The Knight took her hand, raised it up to his lips, and kissed her knuckles. “I am your Knight. My place is at your side. If you trust me.”

“With my heart.” Bezel answered, turning about and pulling him along back in the direction of the skyskiff. There was so much light in her emerald eyes that it took his breath away. 

It always did.

 

*B*

 

_ The Royal Palace _

_ Atlantis _

_ 2 Months Later _

 

In a rare event in the past year, Bezel found herself alone in her workshop. She was tinkering with a new underlayment of manafilament in an experimental design that curled in a spiral shape around a condensed grid. It was a refinement on her earlier design and the work was delicate, needing steady hands and unbreakable magic control. Control that she had learned in Asa, training under the shamans and mystics hidden away in the wilderness, and from one guru who had made his home in a cave high up in the tallest, coldest mountains that she and her Knight had ever seen. Not that she mentioned that in any of her reports home, because it would open too many questions about her and her Knight. She would never dare utter a word about the feel of her Knight’s arms around her when they slept in the wilderness, or the heat of his mouth on her that always left her whimpering. 

There was a knock at her door that she heard faintly, too much of her attention on the delicate work underneath her fingers and the grasp of her mana. 

“I’m busy.” She called out, her voice sounding oddly in her distracted ears.

“You usually are.” The voice of her father came back. Her Knight’s voice would have made her smile, another alchemist’s voice would have irritated her. Neither of those would have broken her concentration.

Shocked at the presence of her father, the  _ Mage King _ intruding into the tiny sanctum of her workshop, Bezel jerked back with a yelp and lost control. Her newest magical capacitor prototype disintegrated with the crackling of broken manafilament and crumbling granite as her power burned it in the sudden flare, and it collapsed into a pile of dust and gravel on the bench. Breathing hard, she turned and stared up at him, and to Volkas Lantea’s credit, the aging Mage King at least looked sheepishly apologetic about it.

“What are you doing here?” She got out, trying not to make it sound like a gasp. He’d never set foot down into the lower levels of the palace in all the years she grew up watching him. He’d never even set foot into her nursery, that had always been the job of the various nannies and governesses who were her minders, feeding her, dressing her, and trundling her along to be displayed to him like a trophy briefly before being carted back off. 

Her father stood there, his heavy fringed cloak noticeably absent and no weapon strapped to his belt, nervously shifting his weight. “I wanted to see how you were doing.”

She blinked rapidly, then looked away. “I am well, father.” She said, going for the formal tone that her tutors had always drilled into her. 

“Good. That’s - that’s good.” He said. She risked a furtive glance up to him, and blinked to find him looking away and stroking at his beard. There was gray in it now, which surprised her. She didn’t remember there being gray in his hair when she had left to continue her tour of Below.

Volkas Lantea had forever stood with strength and confidence, an unbroken and quietly threatening presence one stepped carefully around. Yet now, in the dim light and the quiet of one of her few sanctums, he stood before her in simpler dress. Without a weapon, and without that menacing presence, meeting with her in private. All of these were things that he’d never done before, and she wasn’t sure why it twisted up her stomach.

“Why are you here?” She repeated, and he looked at her in surprise. “You’ve never cared to bother with me before. I’m just an afterthought to you, just your  _ daughter _ and unworthy of your notice or your attention.” They were bitter words and a sentiment she’d felt and said before, and still the barbs in them seemed to dig in deep. 

“That isn’t true.” Her father protested in a hurt and panicked voice. “Bezel, no. You’re wrong. You’ve never been an afterthought. I care about you, and I worry about you.”

Bezel blinked at his assertion, laughed one short and incredulous laugh. “And yet you can hardly bear to spend time in my presence.” He glanced away, and her hands tightened into fists. “You can barely look at me,  _ father, _ so don’t stand there and lie to me.”

“I’m not lying!” He snapped, and turned back to face her with blue fire flashing in his eyes. “I struggle to look at you because every time I do, I see her!”

Bezel leaned back at his rebuke, parsing out what he had said. She had heard the words, knew them individually, and yet…

She kept staring at him, and he finally bowed his head. As though he were devastated.

“Who do you see?” She asked, her voice softer.

“Who else?” He shrugged. “I see your mother when I look at you.” Bezel was struck into silence, and he mustered the courage to look back up. “May I come in?” When she didn’t refuse, he did so, and reached for the second stool in the small room, taking a seat a few paces from her. “It’s rather cramped in here.”

“I don’t need very much space.” She said, her head still swimming at the strangeness of the encounter. “It suffices.” 

“I could command a larger space for you.”

“No. Thank you, but. No.” Bezel breathed in and made to sweep up the ruins of her failed experiment. “Let me understand you rightly. You have been ignoring me for years, because I look like my mother?”

“You have her hair.” The king smiled thinly, and drummed his fingers on her workbench. “You have her eyes, and her smile. She cared. I never understood how she could care so much about people, yet she did. Just like you do now. Losing her  _ gutted _ me. When she died, you were all that was left of her, just a tiny girl that had her hair and her eyes. And every time I went to look at you, I saw her. It was wrong of me, I know that now. You - you deserved better, Bezel.”

Her mind pounded at it. “Who named me?” She asked hoarsely. “Who named me Bezel?”

“She did.” The king said. “It was the name she’d wanted if we had a girl, and she held onto that name for years. But we kept having sons, so she kept saving it, until…” He waved a hand feebly. “It meant something to her. I never asked her what, and I wish I had.”

Bezel’s mind raced through the possibilities, and her hand twitched as she almost reached to the drawer where the small leather pouch holding Alastair Sloane’s plain silver engagement ring and the lock of her mother’s hair tied around it lay. She wondered if  _ Bezel _ had been a name that her mother and Alastair had agreed on, when they had been planning a life for themselves.

Before her father had met her mother. Before she was taken away to Atlantis to be his bride.

“You are making miracles. You throw yourself into this work, into your charities, into this quest to see the whole of the world. I wish you didn’t. You’re all that I have left of her, Bezel. I couldn’t stand to lose you, too.”

Bezel jerked her head up and stared back at him. He kept smiling at her, worried and nervous. Broken in a way that she’d never seen before, because he was forever wearing his mask. Now the mask of the Mage King was gone and Volkas Lantea, aged and graying and twisted, sat in her space.

“Did you love her?” Bezel asked him, and a sick feeling took root in her heart.

“From the day I saw her.” He nodded. 

“Was your marriage arranged?”

He blinked. “No. No, I chose her.”

 

Bezel’s eyes burned, and she remembered how broken Knight Commander Alastair Sloane had looked sitting in his office as he spoke to her and her Knight.

_ I am going to tell you a story. And you might just believe me. _

“Did she choose you?” Bezel demanded through a thickened throat. Her father’s smile faded, and confusion took its place.

“What?”

“You  _ chose _ her.” Bezel repeated his words. “Did she choose  _ you? _ Or was she even allowed a choice?”

A hitch settled into his breathing. “Bezel, what…”

“You loved her. Did she love you?” She demanded, and the ache in her chest deepened. 

“She…” The king stuttered, drowning and grasping at empty air. He looked away with a sob, and she saw what else he finally felt shame for. It burned in her heart, and didn’t disappear.

“Get out.” Bezel said to him.

“Please, Bezel…”

_ “Get. Out.” _ She repeated, and her magic flared around her, the blue burning away as angry pink flooded it completely.

Stricken mute, her father stood and woodenly left her workshop, closing the door behind him. The small room was lit up in brilliant hues of vivid pink, and Bezel choked out a sob and forced her magic into calm, casting the room in almost total darkness. She reached into the drawer and pulled out the pouch with her most precious treasure, held it to her chest, and cried in the dark.

 

*K*

 

_ Royal Academy of Mages _

_ Atlantis, Inner District _

  
  


Professor Pakkem Fardel was an old and supposedly enlightened soul who served as the headmaster of the Royal Academy. For those of the well-to-do whose paths would not take them into military service with the Mage Knights, and even for those knights whose service did not bind them to foreign combat assignments with the RRD, the courses taught by Professor Fardel and the others on his staff were used to train the royal alchemists, the healers, and the far-messagers. They produced primers that served as the basis of every Atlantean’s first lessons on magic, so there was no Atlantean or Terran-born Atlantean mage who was not influenced by his teachings.

The Knight stood at the back of his office, watching as the old man with liver spots and gnarled, arthritic hands leaned his chin on them. Fardel stared at Bezel, who was sitting in the slightly uncomfortable chair reserved for visitors, squinting at her with hard eyes.

“You. Want me. To  _ change _ my curriculum.” Fardel said, summarizing the last three minutes of their conversation.

Bezel nodded, and the Knight knew by the tension in her shoulders that she was already fed up with his attitude. It was the same flak she’d been getting for a year now from the royal alchemists and from her father’s advisors and from everyone who kept looking at her like she was a strange girl with a head full of strange ideas that should never have dared try to insert herself into their affairs.

“You need to start teaching better control.” Bezel nodded. “Right now, it’s accepted practice for anyone who uses magic to draw on Mana for however much they require, and to use their own reserves sparingly.” It was repeating her earlier point, but the man’s attitude deserved the juvenile explanation. “The evidence we’ve gathered so far in the Leyline Mapping Project indicates that the leylines do not have a steady amount of strength to them. It changes, and we don’t know why. Or how much.”

“Mana is everywhere.” Professor Fardel scoffed, pulling his head of off his hands so he could wave one around him wildly. “It is there for the taking, and we take it. There is always more.”

“You don’t know that!” Bezel pressed him. “Just because it is what you were taught and what your teachers were taught does not make it true! You have to look at the evidence, and put your traditions and practices aside if it does not suit! There are better ways to draw on the power of the leylines than pulling on it in great and uncontrolled gulps. You know the work I’ve been doing on the Sending Stones. A small charge, so small that even a red aura mage could manage it without being winded, and there is communication more viable than any far-messager could manage. We can do better!”

“Magic is the birthright of our civilization, the cornerstone of our society.” Professor Fardel reminded her curtly. “Those who can draw upon Mana and shape it to their will are blessed, and it is by the guidance of Atlantis, where the strongest of mages reside, that we have been given the gift of peace in our time.” Fardel conjured up a bit of his magic around his hand, a faint summer-grass yellowy green. “You would upend all of that by telling us to deny our gift and talent, to stop drawing on the power of mana all around us and to rely on  _ devices? _ As though we were some untrained and untalented horde? We are more than the teeming masses, princess. We are more than the base creatures who live Below. We are divinity in flesh, and our strength is the sign of our right of rulership. Of yours.”

Bezel breathed out loudly at that. “I see. Might makes right.”

“As it has always been.” The Professor puffed out his chest proudly.

Bezel gripped the armrests of her wooden chair. “Not always. But very well. Let us say that you are right. Let’s say that the strength of a person’s magic is the  _ only thing that matters. _ The royal family rules because…”

“Because they are the strongest. The gift of magic flows in the blood of the Mage King and his heir. Their mighty blue aura, strongest in all the world!”

Bezel stood, and let her aura flare around her. Brilliant, blazing pink. Not a spot of blue was to be found in it. The Knight had seen her strength before, seen it swirled blue and pink, but this revelation of her growth startled him.

Professor Fardel’s voice got stuck in his throat as an unseen wind whipped around in the room, catching the edges of loose paper.

_ “There are stronger than my father in the world.” _ Bezel uttered, a strange harmonic dissonance in her voice that wafted on the air. 

“Impossible.” Fardel gaped. “You - you should only be a Blue…”

Because blue was the color of magic ascribed to the royal family. To the strongest of their servants. The Knight remembered his training. There were other colors, stronger. Pink. Violet. But those were the domain of monsters. Things he was trained to run from if alone, or to destroy with greater numbers.

But it was Bezel, and he knew the truth of her.

Bezel set a fingertip down on the edge of his desk.  _ “Might makes right. If I am the strongest, is my word inviolate? Is there no authority greater than I? Who is there to stop me, were I to throw you in prison for taking offense at your words?”  _ Where her finger rested, the wood began to darken and smoulder from unseen heat. 

“Mercy. Mercy, highness, I - I have been  _ loyal, _ I have served Atlantis…” Fardel stammered, and the Knight could only shake his head at the display. All of his self-righteous policy, his beliefs about the superiority of himself and the rule of the strong, and it crumbled when he was faced with the natural conclusion of it.

Strength could support order. It could defend it. It did not  _ make _ it.

Bezel’s aura faded away, and she breathed out slowly, pulling her hand back. Fardel slumped back in his seat, wide eyes never leaving her.

She was no monster. She was just Bezel.

“I don’t want to rule.” Bezel told the old man softly, sad bitterness in her voice. “Not like that. Not where the strength of magic is the only thing that matters. Not where kindness, and joy, and  _ love _ are meaningless. Is that the kind of world you really want, Fardel?” She met his terrified gaze, and the Knight knew that neither of them were blinking.

“You can do better.” Bezel finished, and turned away, looking exhausted from facing another member of Atlantis’s vaunted elite and their twisted worldview.

The dark charred spot of wood remained on the headmaster’s desk. She left the office, and the Knight followed her, three paces behind.

 

***

 

_ Outer District _

_ Atlantis _

_ 2 Months Before Bezel’s 16th Birthday _

  
  


The Knight had gone alone to volunteer at the Geenes’ shelter the next day off he had after the stunning revelation that Miss ‘Ella’ was Bezel. After the Geenes had seen the truth of her identity laid out so clearly in her father’s throne room, Bezel had been sure that they’d want her to keep away. 

Neither of them had said anything at the start, they’d only looked at one another. And that night when the Knight went to leave, Willys had taken him aside and spoken quietly into his ear.

_ ‘You tell that princess of yours she doesn’t have to feel ashamed. She’s welcome back anytime, no matter what she calls herself.’ _

The next time that the Knight left on his day off, ‘Ella’ came with him. And the Geenes didn’t say a thing about her real identity.

Their trips to the Outer District of Atlantis remained a lifeline for them both, a chance to drop the masks they wore and take on false names that let them be themselves as they continued to do good work that helped those who needed help the most. Especially as Bezel kept coming closer and closer to her 16th birthday, the press of interested suitors became ever more aggravating. She didn’t take one of them seriously, and the Knight kept telling himself that it was because of her love for him. But there was a part of him that still doubted, because it seemed so inevitable. Her father had made it perfectly clear that when she turned 17, she would find herself married off. Or at least, he’d kept mentioning it before. The Mage King hadn’t been mentioning it very much lately. He hadn’t even stayed in the same room as Bezel if he could help it. 

Now, on another day off months after Bezel had been revealed to the Geenes, the Knight found himself blindfolded and marched along through the streets. If not for Bezel suffering the same and kept close to him while they were surrounded on all sides by giggling women and cheerful men, he would have been worried. He was still on edge, but the Geenes were there and that reassurance kept him from tearing it off, grabbing for his sword, and going on the attack. 

“Where are you taking us?” Bezel asked again, earning fresh titters from the crowd that had come along with the Geenes. 

“I told you Ella dear, it’s a surprise.” Willys said cheerfully.

“But we’ve been walking for forever!” Bezel protested, and the Knight sighed. Forever may have been stretching it, but they’d definitely come a long ways from the main shelter. After being spun around several times first, the Knight was well and truly lost.

“We’re almost there, don’t worry.” Samiel remarked, and the Knight kept his silence for the next few minutes. Finally, they came to a stop and the blindfolds were removed.

In the midday light, he blinked as he found himself looking at another one of the small shacks in the outer district which had clearly been worked on. He frowned as he looked closer, finding it familiar but unable to place why.

Bezel gasped, though, and looked as pale as if she’d seen a ghost. Watching her reaction made him shiver, and he placed it two moments later when he looked around and recognized the hut for what it was. Not by its own appearance, it was too changed, but from the neighborhood that it was in. From the view of the castle at the center of Atlantis.

It was where he had lived with his mother, long ago. It was his old home.

“We’ve been working on fixing this place up in our spare time.” Samiel said, and the Knight tore his eyes away from the (un)familiar sight to peer at the man and the crowd gathered around. “You’ve done so much for us, sir knight, when nobody else would. Bringing us food when we could not afford to buy it for the hungry. Bringing us the aid of the charming lass Miss Ella here, brightening our days with her company. And then sharing our plight with the princess of Atlantis, who in her mercy funded our mission and allowed us to help so many more.”

Willys came forth and set a hand on his arm. “A young man like yourself, I’d normally worry about him catching the attention of too many unworthy girls and women. But you’ve always been respectable, and forthright. And you’re at a place in your life where you’ll be wanting to settle down, and to show a girl who you fancy that you can take care of her, provide for her. So you’ll be wanting a proper home.”

Moisture pricked at his eyes as he looked back at the house, and took stock of it. It was bigger than before; a wall had been torn down, brought out, the outer frame expanded. The roof was entirely brand new.

“I know it’s a bit on the small side, but it’s yours.” Samiel said, pulling him back to the present. “Nobody’s lived in it for years. It’s what we could afford, and we fixed it up as best we could.” The older man chuckled. “Managing it while you weren’t around took some doing. You have a habit of wandering through the district.”

Quiet chuckles greeted the remark, and the Knight shrugged, not smiling. He didn’t feel like smiling. 

“Why me?” He asked. “There, there have to be others. Others with families already who could use a home like this, with sturdy walls to keep the warmth in.”

“Because you’ve always been there to help us. Because my wife and I believe that one good turn deserves another.” Samiel searched his eyes. “Because you’ve a girl who loves you.”

He jerked his head back to Bezel, fighting back panic, and saw her staring at him. She didn’t look terrified, just stunned.

Samiel’s expression softened as he caught the two of them looking at one another, unsure of what to say or do. “It’s yours.” He told the Knight. “You can do with it what you want. Give it to a needy family if you wish. Or keep it for yourself, and let others have the use of it when you’re not around. But at least do us the courtesy of spending some time in it first. These people here put in a lot of hard work to make it suitable.”

Not one to throw such a kind gesture back into the face of its bestowers, the Knight nodded mutely. He saw Willys reach for Bezel’s hand and pull the girl off to the side, but then Samiel was speaking again and commanding the attention of all.

“Good people!” Samiel called out loudly. “The gift of a home has been given, and received! Now, why don’t we go along back to our other duties and leave our favorite knight to see to his home?” There were mutters of cheerful agreement, and with a few pats on the shoulder and winks and nods the crowd dispersed, leaving the Knight to his old home, newly refurbished. Willys stayed the longest, and the Knight watched as she kept whispering to Bezel, saying something that made the girl blush brighter and brighter before she bit her lip and nodded, and Willys Geene pulled her into a gentle hug. The woman came over to the knight smiled at him steadily, then kissed his forehead.

_ “It’s not wrong to love her, you know.”  _ Willys whispered to him when she pulled back.  _ “Princess or no, she’s still a woman. And she loves you.” _

 

Then she was gone as well, and the Knight and Bezel were alone outside the house. 

 

“They gave you a home.” Bezel whispered. 

“My mother’s home.” The Knight echoed. “I...I didn’t think…” He stopped, shook it off. Sighed. “Want to go see what they did inside?”

She did, and took his hand.

 

The expanded space had been used to form a proper bedroom, one with its own walls and an actual door that  _ closed _ instead of just a doorway. The old, ragged mattress that he’d shared with his mother in his former life had been replaced with a new one. It was freshly stuffed and sitting on an actual wooden bedframe with a soft gray comforter carefully tucked in over it. It was the first thing that the Knight went to and noticed, and when he looked away he caught Bezel staring into the bedroom as well. They met each other’s eyes and he felt his face burning as brightly as her own glowed, and then they turned away from each other simultaneously.

“I...I’ll make us some tea.” Bezel got out, and made her way to the kitchen. The Knight watched her, blinking before he caught sight of a basket sitting on the table, stuffed full of wrapped parcels of food, and a small tin of dried tea leaves.

There was already a fire burning in the old woodstove, repaired and repainted and shining like new. The Geenes and the other workers, the other volunteers had done all of this. They had set all of this up, the people who had the least to give. 

He sank into one of the chairs at the kitchen table and stared as Bezel set a kettle of water to boil, looking nothing like the princess that so many other people expected. She moved slowly, delicately, kept glancing back at him and earned one smile after another from him. 

She was herself, just Bezel, a young woman making tea for the young man she loved…

A man who could not love her back. Not the way she deserved.

 

A cup of tea was set before him, steaming liquid up from an irregularly painted mug of middling quality made all the more precious because of its rough edges. He took it in his hands and let it warm his fingers as she sat down across from him. 

“Will you keep it?” Bezel asked him.

“I should.” He admitted. “They...this is such a gift. To refuse it would be wrong.”

Bezel took a sip, and her eyes never left his face. She looked at him over the rim of her own mug. “Why do you want to refuse it?”

“Because this is supposed to be a home.” He told her. “It can’t be mine.”

“Why not?”

“Because my home is wherever you are.” He said plainly. “And your home is in that palace.”

“The palace is where I grew up. It isn’t my home, either.” Bezel corrected him. “If your home...if your home is wherever I am? If I’m here, now, then what is this?”

He closed his eyes. He knew what she wanted him to say. He found he couldn’t, and so instead he reached into the basket, mustered a forced smile, and started digging out food. “Let’s see what Mrs. Geene prepared for our midday meal.”

Bread baked that morning, dried pressed beef, a small wheel of cheese the size of his clenched fist, fresh fruits, and even sweets. He divided it between them and they fell in synch with a relaxed meal. They managed light conversation, sticking to the safe topics of the ongoing leyline survey, her new experiments, and with him sharing the few happy memories of his childhood spent in the house that was now his again.

They didn’t speak of her suitors, or her future. They didn’t speak of them. He felt those unspoken worries pressing down on him, on her regardless, growing heavier every minute. They grew as heavy as the long looks that he gave her, as the ones she returned.

When the food was eaten and the tea had gone cold in his hands, the Knight at last surrendered to it, and pressed in.

“What did Mrs. Geene say to you?”

Her head came up, stray strands of her red hair brushing over her eyes in surprise. “What did Mr. Geene say to you?”

“I asked you first.”

“So?” Bezel countered archly.

The Knight blinked and looked away. “He said...He said that it wasn’t wrong to love you. Because you weren’t just a princess. Because you were a woman first.” He exhaled and found that the tension didn’t fade. “And you?”

Bezel worried at her lower lip. “She told me not to let my crown get in the way of my happiness.”

His heart started thundering away at that confession. She looked up at him shyly, then looked past him. He turned and followed her eyes, and saw where she was looking. To the bedroom. His heart thundered even faster, and she got to her feet, walking around the table and holding a hand out to him.

He took it. Bezel pulled him along, pulled him towards the bedroom, leaving him dizzy and warm and faint. The Knight somehow pulled himself together right at the threshold, stopping and squeezing down on her hand until she stilled as well, turning to him.

“We shouldn’t do this.” He got out. “You’re...you’re a  _ princess _ and I’m just a knight.”

“You are  _ My _ Knight.” Bezel argued. “You are mine, and I love you, and you love me.”

“I can’t give you the life you deserve.” He tried, searching for any argument that would stop this. He wanted this, he wanted her and his body ached for hers, but he still tried to fight it. “I’ll never be a rich man.”

“Then be a good one.” Bezel pressed her hand to his chest, and her fingers curled when she felt his heartbeat pulse against her palm. “I don’t want a rich man. I want a  _ good man. _ I want you.”

He closed his eyes. “When you turn 17, your father will make you marry some noble. That’ll be the end of it. Of us.”

“I love you, and I will have no other.” She vowed, the words catching in her throat. She was trying not to cry. “My heart is not something to be taken, to be  _ sold. _ It can only be given.”

She took his hand and pressed it over her breast, and he sucked in air like a dying man. “With my life. With my heart. With everything I am, my Knight. I am yours. If you want me.”

“I want you.” He whispered. “I know I shouldn’t, but I do.”

“Then don’t push me away.” She begged him. “Let me at least have this. Let me have you. Let me have one thing in my life that isn’t tainted by  _ what _ I am.”

It was a hard truth, one that he’d needed to face. Bezel was a young woman who knew her own heart better than he did, who knew what she wanted. He thought her fearless, but here, in the quiet and the dark of his house, he could see she was afraid.

Bezel was afraid of being rejected by him. Of not being worthy of him. He took her face in his hands, cradling it like he’d done so many times before, and leaned down and in to kiss her. She was worthy of the whole world, deserved all of it. She wanted him,  _ him _ over all others. He would never deny her that prize.

They had kissed before, they had cuddled at night on their travels. He had touched her over her clothes, stroked her hair. There had always been a line that they’d never been willing to cross before. They stepped over it together at last, shedding their clothes, their worries and their fears, and fell into each other. 

She learned the scent and the feel of him. He learned the curves of her body, the tremble and the taste of her. They went slowly at first, nervous and shy and laughing softly as they took their time. Then the laughing stopped and the moans began. They shared gasps and whimpers as she took him into her. She dug bruises into his shoulders and his back with her fingers and left bite marks on his neck. They moved together in the oldest dance until she shivered around him with a soundless cry. He followed a moment later, pouring into her and collapsing by her shoulder.

They lay there in the lazy light of the afternoon, undone and reshaped and made whole and perfect. She cradled into him, laying her head on his chest and smiling. She traced designs on his stomach as he caressed her long red hair, the Knight growing drowsy yet refusing to nod off while she remained awake.

“I love you.” Bezel breathed over his heart, and the Knight smiled and held her tighter as he drew the blankets over them. He was hers, she was his.

They slept until twilight. It was the best sleep he’d had in years.

 

*B*

 

_ The Royal Palace _

_ Atlantis _

_ 1 Month After Bezel’s 16th Birthday _

  
  


The day had come at last. 

While Bezel had been openly refusing the advances and courting gestures of fully a dozen suitors from Atlantis and the lands Below, she had kept busy in her work of constantly collecting and compiling the numbers gathered by the myriad leyline survey teams deployed about Terra. Data that had been taken at spring and fall in the north, summer and winter elsewhere, the dry and the wet seasons along the midline of the world. The work of tens of thousands of man hours and the largest non-combat military assignment in the past 400 years came to this. The last team from the unsettled western lands had arrived.

She was close to done with her preparations on her greatest experiment yet, a magical capacitor designed to touch the leylines of Terra no matter where the user would go. It was the combination of all her knowledge in runecrafting, in artificing, and in pure spellcasting. It would give its user - her - access to the world’s magic, but carefully gathered, carefully managed. Not absorbed haphazardly.

She just needed a complete picture of the world. She needed the full image of the magic that coursed around it if she was to make it work without difficulty.

When the messenger set down at the skyskiff docks, Bezel had her Knight waiting there to greet them. Her Knight took the gathered readings and the devices used to collect them to the royal alchemist’s laboratory where Bezel waited on pins and needles with the others for the results.

“It’s here!” Bezel shouted, loud enough to make every head in the room full of bubbling beakers and burners underneath potions and admixtures to turn in her direction. She snatched it from the Knight quickly, remembering almost too late to give him an apologetic look, and then she was powering up the devices and feeding them into her carefully kept and secured database.

It was the work of a tense fifteen minutes, and then the database of mana readings was finished. She fed it to a projector cobbled together from one of her earlier Sending Stone prototypes and activated it, and a massive image of Terra appeared in the air above their heads. The gentle marble of white glaciers, green land, and blue oceans turned slowly while the rivers of mana, colored a brilliant pink on the overlay, appeared in full for the first time. 

Over every landmass were a series of intricate curved lines, rivers of magic that flowed without any geometric correlation, but a strange pattern all the same. Curiously, those rivers of magic even existed over the oceans as well, and through it all were great flowing currents, larger and thicker than the smaller ones that criss-crossed and ran in imperfect parallel and perpendicular. 

And when she shifted from the datasets of one season in the year to another, the lines all  _ changed. _

“This - this can’t be right.” One alchemist muttered, speaking for much of the disheartened room as they stared up at it. “It changed. Why did it change? If there’s no consistency, then how are we supposed to use it?”

“We can’t.” Another one uttered with a scowl. “A year’s worth of painstaking data gathering, and it’s a waste. We know where the leylines are now. Lovely. But if they’re inconsistent, if there’s no pattern, then we can’t use them, or rely on them.”

 

Bezel shook her head. “No, we can’t give up! There’s...there has to be a pattern here. There’s an explanation for this, we just aren’t seeing it. There’s something we have to be missing!”

“Forget it.” Another alchemist assigned to the Sending Stone project muttered, pushing the device away from him. “It was a nice idea, princess, but I’ve got better things to be doing than chasing down empty promises and unsolvable riddles.”

Bezel felt her confidence beginning to crumble again. “Please, we’re so close. This could make things so much better, if we could only solve this!”

The alchemists all walked away from her, and as Bezel stood there, shunned and reeling from the hurt of it, she felt her Knight’s steady hands come to rest on her shoulders.

“Come, princess.” Her lover-in-truth said quietly. “Come on. Let’s leave them be for now.”

If she stayed, she would be yelling at walls that refused to budge. Bezel numbly nodded her head and packed it all up. The Sending Stone. The data. The projector. All of it, she stowed into her satchel before she turned and let her Knight walk her away from the laboratories.

Away from her failure. 

“Where do you want to go, your highness?” Her Knight asked her. 

She was hurting and torn up inside, and wanted to be somewhere that she didn’t feel confined. His home was out of the question.

There was only one place that might make her feel better.

 

***

 

_ The Duck Pond _

_ Atlantis _

  
  


Her Knight sat on the bench nearby. He was already half-asleep in the quiet calm of the afternoon, and Bezel tore pieces of bread off of the loaf they’d stolen from the kitchens and threw them to the ducks. It was calming and repetitive and it was something that the ducks appreciated, quacking softly as they waded near the pond’s edge where she sat. 

“At least I’m useful to you.” She said softly, looking at the waterfowl and tossing another handful of small clumps at the gaggle. 

The royal alchemists had all but washed their hands of the great experiment. The leylines, if the data was accurate, were in flux, were unstable. Bezel felt like there had to be a pattern, but it was one that they didn’t feel willing to pursue. 

There was a pattern there. There had to be. She just couldn’t see it. Why? What was she missing? What did she not understand?

She had looked to Atlantis and its lore for the answers and come up short. Was there something she’d learned in her travels that could help? Bezel thought back to Yagi Rusla and to the sage who lived in the highest mountains of Asa. Lessons of  _ Intent _ and control, of doing much with little. The mages who, while less powerful than her in raw strength, had possessed such wisdom and skill that she had sought them out as teachers.

There were the Asan wilderness mages and their ‘Great Rivers of Mana’, the term used by the Weishun-speaking locals for the leylines. The Arocans had had their shamans. And Yagi Rusla…

_ Do you ever control a river when you dip your hands into it to drink the water? _

Yagi Rusla, who had been so stunned by her Lifesight spell. Yagi Rusla, who did not order or command as Atlanteans did, but led by example, and who asked.

_ We like to be asked, more than we like being told. _

Yagi’s magic had always felt like that. Like she wasn’t ordering spells into existence, but that she was asking for them. Her aura had been only a sunny yellow in strength, but she had been able to do so much.

And the Sending Stones...How little power it had required, when she piggybacked the far-message onto an Arocan leyline. How little power she’d needed when she let the spell work  _ with _ the natural currents of mana. 

A soft snoring broke her out of her reverie, and she turned to look back at her Knight, falling asleep on the park bench. It made her smile with a touch of sadness as she remembered his mother sleeping on another park bench when she’d first met him. Was he really that tired, or was he just that relaxed? Watching him snooze away, breathing in his gentle wheezes as his chest rose and fell…

Bezel paused, blinked looked at him again. She watched him breathe in his sleep. Slow and steady. Something in it hummed in the back of her brain.  _ Listen, _ some skittering thought whispered.  _ Listen, listen. This is important. _

What was? His breathing? She reached into her satchel and dug out the projector, powering it up and manifesting the magical image of Terra and all of the leylines that had been scanned. A year’s worth of data seen visually. 

Breathing, in and out. Precious oxygen, drawn in and circulated through him, needed for life. She stared at the map of the world, a combined picture of all its readings, which made for a confusing mashup of lines, with thinner ones burning brightly at the center of larger leylines, and others all but disappearing for a time.

Like the world’s magic was circulating. Like it was breathing stronger in some places, and then…

Bezel cycled through the seasons and watched the leylines in the north, close to the glaciers where true winter existed. They grew strong in the summer, fluxed in the fall, waned in the winter. And further south, they pulsed stronger, but there too was inconsistency. 

No, not inconsistency. Not randomness. A change. A pattern. Like Terra was  _ breathing.  _ Like her Knight breathed while he slept.

Bezel felt her heartbeat quicken as she cycled through the leyline readings again, and again. If the world was breathing…

She shuddered and her eyes went wide. 

“No. No, it...Can it?” Because it  _ couldn’t be _ that simple. But what else would explain it?

She’d been trying to make a spell to see magic, and she’d ended up making a Lifesight spell. Bezel had treated it as a flawed experiment with an unexpected result. It hadn’t been flawed, she just hadn’t understood it.

The leylines. The leylines were magic. They were the flow of mana around the world. Like a bloodstream.

Terra breathed. Terra had a pulse. Terra’s leylines were its blood vessels. Was Terra alive? Was she...No.

_ No. Not Terra.  _

 

Heart thundering in her chest, Bezel stared at the ducks out on the pond and activated her Lifesight spell. They glowed faintly, tiny bits of life floating on the water. Then she turned and looked to the trees around the pond, and saw them glow, less brightly than the animals, but strong and steady and sure. And the grass shimmered faintly, a sea of gentle warmth all around her.

Bezel looked at her Knight with her Lifesight spell and saw him shining as a brilliant emerald fire. And between them? Between them all, between all the things that were alive were the faintest tendrils of connection that she’d never seen before. That she’d never looked hard enough, or with the right perspective to see.

“Mana.” Bezel whispered, pressing a hand to her chest. “Sweet Mana, this…”

She shut her eyes, kept her Lifesight spell active, and tried something risky, something that she wouldn’t have dared if she’d not been pushed to it. She kept the spell active, and  _ felt for the Leylines. _

It overwhelmed her, and she couldn’t look away. It was life.

Mana was life.  _ Life was mana. Magic came from life. Magic WAS life. _

Every blade of grass, every tree, every insect, every animal that swam, flew, crawled and ran across the world was separate and connected to it. The humans of Terra, the creatures that burned the brightest with life and potential, were connected to it as well, a sea of color in the wash of the currents.

She pulled herself back with a gasp and slumped backwards onto the grass, squinting as she found herself blinded by an early sunset before she covered up her eyes with an arm. It had been afternoon before, but the aches in her body from sitting up for so long spoke to the truth of the vision. She’d almost lost herself in the currents of mana.

“It’s  _ life.” _ Bezel choked the words out, and felt tears gathering. It was the answer to why the leylines moved. Life changed. The world breathed. Trees went dormant, animals moved on, and the leylines, created by life, shifted to match.

Laughing at the discovery, Bezel pulled her arm away from her face, and realized too late that she’d forgotten to disengage her spell, that she was still humming with the same level of intensity that she’d used to perceive the leylines and the things that made them on Terra.

Bezel froze as she stared up at the early evening sky and saw an explosion of life and mana above her. It swept her up all over again.

It was  _ Life.  _ Life,  _ Everywhere _ in the sky. Life, growing and flourishing out in the very stars. Life from elsewhere. Life from the creatures that lived there and...and the other worlds that they must have come from. Worlds like Terra and unlike Terra, but through it all,  _ LIFE. _

Life found a way. Mana exulted in life. It was so beautiful, she didn’t want to look away. She lost herself in tracing the heavens, aware and yet unaware as the sun fell and the stars appeared in a darkening sky. At the last, right before she pulled back, she could feel the web there as well. Every world and every concentration of life in the stars was faintly connected to each other. She felt Terra’s connection to the stars, and that was what finally snapped her out of it.

She came to her senses, aching and hungry and thirsty and weak, with the night sky dark above her and her Knight holding her up with her head on his lap. “Bezel?” He whispered worriedly, shaking her gently. “Bezel, are you back? Please, tell me you’re okay.”

She laughed and found her face sticky with too many dried tears. “I saw it.”

“You saw what?”

She took his hand in hers and squeezed it. “Everything.”

 

***

 

_ The Grand Savannah _

_ Aroca _

_ 2 Months After Bezel’s 16th Birthday _

  
  


She would have been satisfied with linking the charm to the leylines of the world before, but once Bezel saw how the web of life and mana stretched out beyond Terra to other worlds and how the ribbons of that web reached tenuously to the world she called home, she went back and remade her plans completely. Charms weren’t really done in Atlantis; the minor works of artifice were seen as children’s playthings, items meant for novelty. They only paid mind to the major devices, like the skyskiffs and their activation keys, and the monitoring devices used by the Atlantean healers.

Bezel was working in a field where she had come up with more ideas and advancements in three years than there’d been in three centuries. What she was attempting here blew everything else out of the water. It would be more than a  _ Capacitor, _ she’d realized when she still thought it would be linked to just the mana of her world. Linked to all the worlds in the milky sea of stars beyond, the miracles it might achieve? It might end up being stronger than all of the power of Atlantis put together.  _ Might _ being the key word; her own worries about the egregious use of mana by the other mages of Atlantis had guided her hand. It would take a charge from the leylines of Terra, and if it worked, from the stars beyond. A  _ trickle charge. _ It could be powered further by donation of her personal mana if her figures were correct, but at rest, in basic use, it would be like the drain of a mosquito on a mammoth. Or even less.

Holding it required the finest, most delicate web of manalattice and internal runecrafting she’d ever attempted, so delicate that her hands could only manage the roughest of the work. The rest required careful managrasp manipulation behind a stasis field to keep the components from reacting to unexpected sparks and charges. The internal structure of the charm was invisible to the naked eye, but to the glow of her Lifesight spell, it was hundreds of thousands, _millions_ of channels and pockets and nooks, carved and laid into a pattern starkly familiar. 

It was patterned like the map of the leylines of Terra, but more. Bezel had crafted the map of the stars into it. She’d wanted to build it sturdy, give it the ability for powerful reserves. By the time she’d finished and fused the stone’s two halves together into a solid, unbreakable whole, she wasn’t sure just how much power it was capable of storing. Or maybe she didn’t want to know. Bezel had stared at the finished product, inactive and dormant and waiting for the ritual that would activate it, and shivered. It needed to be protected.

Coming up with a way of protecting it had taken another week’s time, but for an artifact this precious, Bezel didn’t want to take any chances. There was so much potential in this, so much promise and so much risk. She loved her work, she thrilled at the thought of her work doing good for the people of Terra, but this was one project that was hers and hers alone. She thought of what someone like her brothers or another corrupt Knight Commander or her  _ father _ might do if they possessed this.

With all of the crafting and artificing done, there was just the spellwork left.

On her request, the Knight had commandeered a skyskiff and flown them down to the Grand Savannah. Officially, she was following up on her original tour and meeting with the locals in a show of goodwill. They were, in point of fact, due to make such an appearance the next day. Tonight, though, Bezel had other plans. 

While Bezel sat by the fire and waited for her Knight to speak, she tried to fight down the blush building in her face. They’d only made love a few times since the Geenes had given him a house of his own, but she still felt shy about it.

The way he blinked wildly and was trying not to gape told her that he felt the same.

“You want me...to make love to you.” He said, running a hand through his hair. “As part of the ritual spell to enchant this stone of yours.”

Bezel bobbed her head once as she stared at the tan stone in her hand. It looked simple and innocuous, smooth and carefully cut and melded into one solid piece. Tonight, though, there was one more addition. Aged red hair, dry and brittle was wrapped around it in one direction, while more red hair of the same color, but brighter and newer, went in the other.

“Why did you put your mother’s hair around it? Why is yours around it?”

“Mana exults in life.” Bezel said softly, and he nodded. It hadn’t been the first time she’d said that to him. “I’m making a lot of this up as I go along. There’s no guide on how to do this.” She stroked the pad of her thumb over her mother’s hair. But it was important. It was a connection and a reminder and a focus all in one.

Tears prickled in her eyes. “My mother named me.” She said, and her Knight’s chin jerked up a little. “That fight I had with my father? He told me. Bezel had been her name. Her choice, if she were to have a girl. She hung onto it all those years. It was a name he had  _ nothing _ to do with.”

“You think that she and Sloane…?” He uttered, and Bezel nodded again. 

“I was always in her heart.” She told him. He reached over and touched the charm sitting in her hand, running a finger over the crossing bands of red hair. “I need that strength of love to make this.” She held up the other item she’d stowed in her bag, a soft silk violet choker with a small silver ring hanging from it, and her Knight gasped when he saw it. “I need  _ their _ love to guide it.”

Sloane’s engagement ring hung from the choker. She stared at it a moment longer, then turned to look at him.

His eyes were blown wide in the night. “Bezel?”

She bit her lip. “I love you. I will have no other. I see how you hurt every time I’m dragged in front of another  _ suitor. _ This is my promise.”

She set the purple choker in his hand. “With my life. With my heart.” Bezel wiped the tears out of her eyes and smiled. 

He swallowed. “And...the sex?”

“An act of pure creation.” She explained. From all that she’d learned of the world’s more ancient traditions, she knew that rituals were a way of making powerful enchantments, powerful Workings. The time of one, or the place, or the act influenced it. The  _ Intent _ was the strongest influence by far.

In the charm, she was to breathe life. In the charm, she would connect it to the mana and the currents of life through Terra and all the living worlds in the milky sea of stars. The act would guide. The act would show. The stone would be linked to her as she was linked to her mother.

“Will you do this for me?” She whispered. The Knight swallowed and nodded. 

“I am yours.” He got out hoarsely, and she smiled and stood up, moving away from the fire. He followed, drawn by an invisible leash, and laid out their bedrolls side by side. She shed him of his clothes. He removed hers. Bezel pushed her hair back and shivered under his heated gaze, turning so he could put the choker around her neck. It hung low, the band and the empty ring sitting over the bottom of her throat, empty of the stone.

That, Bezel held in her hand and whispered the words of a minor adhesive spell. Then she gave it to her Knight.

“Place it over my heart.” She told him, cupping the side of his face. He blinked wildly again.

“Between your…” She silenced him with a quick, hungry kiss, and once he could think again, he did so. Shaky fingers pressed it where she had directed, feeling for her heartbeat before the cold stone and the hair tied around it was fitted into place, sticking just as Bezel had planned. It made her shiver, and she closed her eyes.

The charm sat over her heart, to be powered by her heart and the heart of the world, and the heart of every other world she’d seen glowing in the stars. It would be succored by the leylines, the rivers and streams of life and power that ran through them all, which she had painstakingly crafted into the charm’s heart. They were all linked. They would all glow. She wondered, would Mana rejoice at what she was doing here? Was it right to make this? She felt like it was, but hubris was the sin of Atlantis, and she was a daughter of it. 

But she was Aine Aibulwalt Lantea’s daughter first.

 

The stone sat on her breastbone, cold and dark and quiet, slowly being warmed by the heat of her body, and Bezel opened her eyes to see the man she loved and who loved her wholly in return looking at her with an open smile and hungry eyes. She was hungry as well.

“Make love to me.” Bezel told him. “Slowly.”

_ Slowly _ was something that they both struggled with at first, but they were getting better at it. More often than not, it was for a lack of time and opportunity to truly enjoy it. Alone in the wilderness, though, there would be no interruptions. Nothing to distract them, nothing to hurry the pleasure. Her hands stroked the broad, sculpted muscles of his chest, and he took her in his arms and laid her down on the thin fabric spread over the rolling sea of grass.

She could have taken them anywhere to do this. She chose Aroca, where they had confessed the truth of their hearts to one another. She chose Aroca, where they had learned the truth of her mother and how she had loved another before being married to the Mage King. She chose Aroca, whose leylines she knew the best. She chose Aroca, where her Knight had chosen  _ her. _

He was tender and gentle at first, his touches leaving trails of electricity and his kisses warm brands over her body. She gasped and felt the wonderful stirring in her belly and her breasts, and tried to match him. Bezel felt her magic burn through her, awakened when he finally nudged her open and slid into her. Every time before she had forced it down, terrified of what its presence meant, because of where they were.

Here, though, in the darkness of the Arocan night with the stars gleaming above them, she cast off the last of her inhibitions. She let the magic flow through her, she let it burn in her veins. She wrapped her arms around his powerful shoulders and locked her ankles together at the small of his back, and then Bezel Lantea did the same with her blinding, bright aura. She wrapped it around him and opened her eyes just enough to see how it brought out his own. Blazing pink warred with green shot through with blue, and then they stopped fighting. Her power wrapped around him, his power wrapped around her, and the blue in his aura burned brighter, burning the green away until only a brilliant sapphire remained. 

She felt her magic singing, and Bezel gasped loudly, rolling him over onto his back. She forced him down, pinned him in place even as he kept driving into her with steady strokes, tilting his head back and gasping silently. His hands came up and cradled her breasts, anchoring her as she rocked onto him.

_ An act of pure creation. _

Bezel struggled to keep her wits about her, but she managed to slow him down, and then started to chant. 

 

She spoke words of making, of love. Of the strength of power given freely. She spoke them in Atlantean, and Arocan. She spoke them in Ruscovy and Weishun. She prayed to Terra and to the worlds beyond, not knowing if the great rivers of mana could understand her or if they were merely a force that flowed, unaware and ignorant of the wishes of a 16 year old girl. She tilted her head back, gasping between the stanzas as her body rippled and quivered and her Knight strained to hold himself back. The stone no longer felt cold against her skin, it  _ burned. _ It burned like the sun on the hottest day and she didn’t dare stop. She couldn’t, not here. The Working, her greatest Working, remained unfinished. 

In short, panting bursts, Bezel kept on.

_ From life, comes Mana. From Mana, the spark of life. On Terra, on all the worlds beyond. The power to protect. The power to love. The power to create.  _

Her thoughts turned to her mother and she smelled the scent of another woman at her throat. For a moment she even thought she felt gentle hands encircle her waist and a kiss settle on her forehead. But it couldn’t be real, her Knight’s hands were elsewhere, his mouth too far away. A dream, a lucid vision brought on by longing?

_ Be...Be strong. Take only that which you are given freely. Know my heart, know its wishes.  _

Mana, she cried out, shaking in place as fresh sweat covered her body on the warm Arocan night and her Knight groaned beneath her, going still, holding close at the cusp of spilling into her, but somehow holding back. The stone burned warmer still, as warm as the heat of him buried inside her.

_ I make you from love. I give you my mana, I give you his. I make you from life, to protect life.  _

She reached for the power swirling around them, and for the power of the leyline that they lay on. She turned her head up to the sky full of stars, to the worlds full of life at the edge of her senses, and to the faint webs of mana that ran between them. Bezel reached for them all, and  _ Asked. _

Mana answered, and she screamed as the world burned gold around her, bright and blinding. She climaxed and a moment later her Knight followed, crying her name.

Bezel Lantea fell into the pull of all the power she’d tied to her charm, and collapsed.

 

***

 

_ She opened her eyes again, and found herself on Atlantis at the duck pond, still shrouded in night. There was no sign of her Knight, and she turned and called for him, looking through the trees without success. But Bezel wasn’t alone. When she looked to the water’s edge, she saw a younger girl sitting there. A girl with long red hair, her back turned to Bezel. When Bezel started towards her, the girl turned and looked back and smiled. _

_ Bezel froze ten paces away, awestruck. The girl was her. Her, as she had been when she was younger. When she had been 13. _

_ “You did it.” The girl said, smiling through emerald eyes full of happy tears, and the hem of her gold-trimmed white dress and her hair fluttered in a wind Bezel couldn’t feel. “Thank you.” _

_ Bezel stumbled closer. “What happened? Where am I? Are...are you me?” She asked shakily, looking around.  _

_ The girl giggled a little. “Where do you think you are?” _

_ “I think I’m dreaming.” _

_ “Then you’re dreaming.” The girl shrugged, and looked around them. “It’s a good dream, though. I can see why you picked it.” _

_ “What?” Bezel uttered, utterly lost. _

_ The younger her looked back again, then stood up. She reached a hand to Bezel and pressed a hand over her heart, and Bezel was startled to find herself dressed in a simple skirt of purple and a blue blouse. “I am the heart of you, made manifest.” The other her said, waiting expectantly. _

_ Bezel brought her hand over and covered the girl’s. “My heart?” She whispered, still not understanding. The other her’s face fell a little, but she shrugged. _

_ Golden light began to replace the dark of the night, enveloping everything around them. _

_ “Don’t forget me. Don’t forget what’s important.” The other her said. _

_ “Wait!” Bezel cried, as the light finished eating away the park, leaving them standing face to face in a sea of gold. _

_ The other her didn’t stop smiling. “Never stop loving the world.” _

_ Bezel tried to speak, but found her voice silenced. The gold swept her up, and took her away. _

 

***

 

Bezel opened her eyes, breathing in sharply before she felt the warmth of her Knight’s arms around her and smelled the musk of him close to her. His arms tightened, and she smiled, feeling him cradle her from behind.

“Please be awake.” He whispered, a tearful prayer. “Please.”

“I wasn’t?” She croaked. His arms loosened for a moment, then tightened around her, pulling her back against his chest.

“After we - after, your charm started glowing gold. It had been glowing before, pink and blue, but after, the surface burned gold. And it floated up, attached itself to your choker. Then you passed out.” He stumbled through the explanation, relief audible as he kept hugging her. 

_ Glowing gold. _ Bezel reached a hand to her heart, and felt only bare skin where the charm had been. She brought her fingers up higher, to just below her throat, and felt familiar warm stone resting there.

“Undo the clasp.” She said to him. “I want to see it.”

“I can’t.” Her Knight said nervously. “Once it connected to the choker, I - I tried to take it off of you. It wouldn’t budge!”

She frowned, took hold of the charm, wondering why it wouldn’t come off.

His fingers brushed over the choker’s clasp at the back of her neck, and it slipped away, coming to rest in her hand.

“What?” He uttered. 

“Comes off just fine.” Bezel mused, holding it out in front of her and staring at it. The tan stone was now a deep and vibrant red, the hair she’d wrapped around it as a focus was gone. Only the deep grooves on its surface, darkly black when she’d begun, were left. Now the strange rune, loosely modeled after leylines, pulsed gold on the blood red stone. It had absorbed the hair of her mother, and her own hair.

It had worked. It was perfect. And she could feel it; it was filled with so much magic. So much life.

She smiled and pressed it back to her throat. “Put it back on.” Her Knight did so with steady hands, and there was a sense of relief that filled her when she let it come to rest on the top of her breastbone again.

“Stop scaring me like that.” He uttered, and she laughed and turned in his arms to look up into his face. The pulsing glow of gold between them began to dim, and finally fell quiet, leaving them in the dark of the night. She looked past him and saw only embers left of the fire. More lost time.

“I’m sorry I worried you.” She apologized, kissing him. 

“Don’t go someplace I can’t follow you.” He told her, a plea and a reminder. Bezel laughed again, enjoying the warmth of him, the ache in her thighs, and the weight of the charm below her neck. She tucked in closer and didn’t protest when he ran a hand through her hair. 

“I love you.” She told him, settling for honesty and truth. 

He fingered the charm, and then the ring that secured it to her thin purple choker. “I’m yours.” He vowed quietly. “Forever.”

Her hand sought his out, pressed it to the charm and squeezed until he wrapped his fingers around it. It needed a name, but she realized it already had one.

It was her Heartstone.

“With my life.” She yawned, and let her eyes flutter shut. “With my heart.”

Bezel nodded off, secure in his arms. The insects chirping around their warded camp, the gentle melody of life lulled them to sleep. Her Heartstone pulsed one last time between them and then slept as well.


	8. And He Broke His Vow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bezel and the Knight are together, and the Heartstone is forged. But as she draws closer to her 17th birthday, the forces within the world grind onwards, threatening all that she loves and wishes to protect. She clings to her Knight desperately...hoping that he will remember all the promises he's made to her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested music for this chapter:
> 
> "I Never Even Told You" -Batman: Mask Of The Phantasm  
> "Dream Fragments" -Chrono Cross

**_Little Moment: The Sorceress And the Knight_ **

By Eric ‘Erico’ Lawson

* * *

**Seven: And He Broke His Vow**

  
  


_ The Royal Palace _

_ The Floating Continent of Atlantis _

_ 3 Months After Bezel’s 16th Birthday _

  
  


The Knight was not one for ceremonies. He never had been. Ceremonies, for him, represented useless pomp and grandeur and extravagant waste, something that the well-to-do of Atlantis had always excelled at. This one grated on his nerves particularly hard, though. It was for Jorran Lantea, Princess Bezel’s brother, second in line for the throne after their eldest brother Desmond. Jorran, who was cruel and had become crueler still as Desmond prepared for the throne and people began to speak of Bezel with greater warmth and respect than they did of him. 

Jorran was 19 now, and even Bezel’s minor successes with the Sending Stones and the leyline mapping project hadn’t diverted his predetermined role. As Desmond would be the future Mage King, Jorran would be his second, the leader of the Mage Knights as their now dead uncle once was. But there was a ceremony that had to be done first, and a sword to be passed on.  _ The _ sword, the one passed down in the House of Lantea that could be traced back to the founding of Atlantis.

Ascalon.

 

With the Court standing in full attendance, and the highest-ranking officers of the Mage Knights swelling their number further, Jorran Lantea kneeled before his father the Mage King. Desmond and Bezel were seated in their own thrones, Desmond off of his father’s shoulder and Bezel seated next to the empty throne that the Queen once sat in.

“My son.” Mage King Volkas Lantea declared, his hand resting on the grip of Ascalon as he held it out in front of him. It exposed the hilt of the weapon, which resembled the head of a ferocious dragon, or a serpent. “This sword is the mighty Ascalon, the symbol of strength of House Lantea. Forged by our distant ancestor, the first to bear our name, and bearing the mark of the creature that he slew to save Atlantis. It is a blade without peer, so infused with magic that no armor, no shield, no spell can resist it. He who bears this sword commands our armies. He who bears this sword is charged with the defense of Atlantis. You have trained from a young age to be a warrior, a knight of great power and without peer. Do you feel ready for this burden?”

“I am ready.” Jorran said, never breaking his eyes away from the Mage King - or more accurately, as the Knight realized from his position off to the side of the elevated platform that the thrones stood on, from the sword in his father’s hands. 

“The sword is protected.” Volkas warned his son, which was also part of the ceremony. “It will not tolerate being used by lesser men. You will be judged by it, and should it find you unworthy of its mantle, it will burn you. It has done this before, when unworthy souls tried to claim it.”

Jorran smirked a little. “It has not met me.”

Volkas sighed and turned the blade around, holding it by the scabbard and offering it hilt-first to Jorran. “Then draw the blade and be weighed.”

Jorran took a step up the stairs, then another, and stopped when he was within reach of Ascalon. Minimizing the shaking of his hand, he wrapped it around the grip and pulled back, drawing it from the scabbard. The blade glowed kaleidoscopically in his hand once it was free, and he grunted and brought his other hand up, holding it aloft with both arms. Jorran’s aura, a turbulent blue, flared in response to the sword. He grit his teeth and hissed through them, shaking from an unseen exertion as the air around Ascalon began to visibly distort.

“No you don’t. Not this time.” Jorran grunted, his fingers going white as he tightened his grip on the sword. It might have been the Knight’s imagination, but he could have sworn that the eyes of the serpent on the hilt flared red for a moment. “I - am - your -master! You belong to me now! You will not harm me.  _ Submit!” _

The pulses of rainbow light from the blade and Jorran’s own aura battled for nearly half a minute while the prince struggled to stay on his feet. He’d ended up with one knee down on the step before the blade Ascalon finally calmed down and its whirling colors settled. Jorran heaved for air after, his brow speckled with sweat. But he was smiling in satisfaction, and the Mage King was nodding his head solemnly. 

“It is done. Jorran Lantea. Show me your hand.” At his father’s beckoning, Jorran relaxed his grip and held his hand up, palm towards the king at first, and then around the room. A little red from the exertion, but not burned. Not scarred. He had passed the trial. “Let all who are witness here today see the results plain. Jorran Lantea has mastered the blade called Ascalon. When Atlantis has need of Ascalon’s power, he shall bear it as the leader of our proud Mage Knights.”

Polite clapping was mixed with more raucous cheers, and the Knight settled for clapping that had the pacing and none of the force. He knew Jorran’s real personality all too well to ever admire or look up to the man. Jorran was too full of his own inflated importance, he thrived too heavily on stepping on others to validate himself. There was never any feeling of coexistence or compassion from him.

Jorran’s most distinct character traits were on full display as he strutted around the Court, holding Ascalon aloft and twirling it over his head every so often to get a rise out of the crowd. From men who roared in approval and from the noblewomen who tittered and swooned in hopes of drawing his eye and his favor. 

“It is a fine blade, father.” Jorran announced heartily. “The enemies of Atlantis will fall before me when I wield it in battle. But I see what you meant about its fickle nature. It battled against me for dominance before it finally saw reason and surrendered to my superior strength. It would have eaten a weaker, gentler soul alive. I should carry it with me all the time from now on.”

“To wield Ascalon is a great privilege, Jorran.” His father said to him in warning. “It is not done lightly, nor do we call on it frequently. It will be returned to the vault once we are finished here.”

Jorran made a face at that. “What good is a weapon that is never used?”

“I am certain that you could stand to use weapons in your daily life less than you currently do, brother.” Bezel cut in tersely. The Knight glanced over to her and saw her exasperation with Jorran’s antics clearly on her face. His gaze caught on the choker she wore around her neck, complete with the blood red stone and the engraved black lines on its surface she wore underneath it, and the silver ring that connected the stone to the fabric. To everyone else, it was naught but a simple bauble, a poorly refined piece of jewelry of lesser value than the glittering gemstones and the precious metals more usually favored.

Only Bezel and the Knight knew just how valuable her Heartstone really was. What it meant. She had become daring in her own fashion now that they were true lovers, and she wore the emblem of their union for all to see, knowing that none would recognize its worth. 

Jorran turned and glared at Bezel for her impudence. “And I should take advice from my little sister, who refuses to even pick up a sword and fights with a thrice-damned wooden stick?”

Bezel sighed. “Don’t misrepresent my words again, Jorran. I was saying that reaching for a blade is too often your first reaction to insult or injury. You could bear to temper your rage, and you would be a better leader for it.”

“Bezel…” The Mage King said softly, trying to cut into the argument between his two children. Desmond said nothing, and only watched with the fascination of a man who enjoyed the suffering of others.

Jorran’s face had purpled under her prodding, and he stormed up the steps, ripping the scabbard for Ascalon out of his father’s hand and slamming the sword back into it. 

He turned and faced the Court, and the Knight set a hand behind his back as he clenched it into a fist. Damn the man, he was up to something. “My dear sister, the princess, seeks to educate me on how best to use this sword. While I  _ value _ her input, I find it somewhat lacking in veracity. How can she counsel me properly when she has no experience of her own? I propose a test, since we have Ascalon here and available. Let Bezel try and draw it from its housing, and let us see if she is worthy of holding Ascalon as well! Should she succeed, I will gladly submit to her wisdom and allow it to be put back into the vaults for a time of greater need. But! Should she fail and be judged unworthy by it, I shall claim Ascalon as my birthright and henceforth wear and wield it as a  _ True _ royal of the House of Lantea. What say you all?” He demanded, whipping the crowd up into a mixture of incredulity and hoots of anticipation.

In opposition to their eagerness, Bezel had a terribly sour look on her face. “No, Jorran. I’m not doing this.”

“Oh, but you will.” Jorran sneered as he stalked closer to her. The room at large might not have been able to hear them, but the Knight, as her protector and guardian, was close enough to make out the tense conversation. “You think that you’re better than me, Bezel? This is your chance to prove it. Let’s see how my timid baby sister does when she is faced with the raw fury of Ascalon battling for supremacy. Or you could beg for my forgiveness in front of everyone here, and you’ll never question me again.”

Perhaps Jorran thought she would fold, as she always had in the past. Bullies needed their targets to fold. But Bezel was not the girl she had been, she was a young woman, strong and secure and thriving.

The Knight watched as she narrowed her brilliant green eyes and pushed herself up from her seat. Jorran smirked and went down the stairs to the carpet, and the Mage King followed them as they took up positions in front of everyone. With their father lingering nearby in case of trouble, and clearly anticipating Bezel to start screaming with a badly burned hand, Jorran cocked his head and grinned as Bezel took in a deep breath. 

She reached for the sword and the Court went silent. Her slender fingers wrapped around the hilt of Ascalon and she closed her eyes. Jorran had drawn it out in one quick and violent pull. The Knight held his breath as his darling girl slid it from the scabbard in a slow, steady gesture. 

The sword burst into incandescent fury once more and the onlookers gasped as Jorran leaned back, waiting for his sister to start screaming. But she didn’t. Her aura didn’t snap into a blazing fire like Jorran’s had either. It spun around her in slow twirls, a whirlwind of gentle pink perfume. Some gasped at the sight of the unnatural color, others screamed. The Mage King went pale, and Desmond leapt from his seat, staring in open-mouthed shock.

None of them had seen Bezel’s aura since it had changed, the Knight realized. Save perhaps for her father. She’d mentioned a fight with him over her mother. Blue had been the color of the royal family and their chosen elites. Pink and violet were the colors of beyond, of greater power that was feared.

In this room of vipers and sycophants, Bezel gleamed as the brightest and most dominant star. 

“Shh. Shh. It’s okay. It’s all right. I’m not going to hurt you.” She murmured softly, and still her eyes were closed as the sword flickered in her gentle grip. The pulses of its light were slowing, though. “You  _ are _ special, aren’t you?” There was a glimmer of gold at her throat for all of an eyeblink before it faded again, so fast that even the Knight almost dismissed it as a flare in the corner of his eye. “No. There is no danger. You can sleep. It’s all right.”

The sword’s kaleidoscopic fluttering stopped at last, settling on a gentle golden glow as Bezel finally opened her eyes and smiled, raising it up to look it over. “Beautiful.” She whispered, and her own pink aura and the golden gleam of Ascalon both faded, though the sword’s own radiance didn’t entirely disappear. It remained like a warm light, no longer burning, but gentler in its power. Content, almost.

Bezel switched it to her other hand and looked at her palm with a soft giggle. 

 

A stupefied Jorran stared at her, as dumbstruck as the whole of the Court was. His mouth opened and closed, but no words came.

“It seems I’m worthy of bearing Ascalon after all, Jorran.” Bezel said, holding it higher so she could examine the serpent’s head carved into the hilt. “Which means you’ll be taking my advice after all.”

“How…” Jorran squeaked out, incredulity starting to give way to incomprehension and the bitter flavor of jealousy.

“Things that have magic and are used gain a little personality of their own in time, it would seem.” Bezel explained. She reached over and took the scabbard from Jorran. “It didn’t like you.”

Jorran’s scowl returned. “You lie. It chose me!”

“It let you use it after you beat it into submission.” Bezel countered archly. “But did you think to  _ ask _ if you could use it? No. Why would you? You’ve never had to ask for anything in your life, Jorran. And it may let you  _ use it, _ but you are  _ not _ its master.”

She slid Ascalon back into its scabbard and walked away even as Jorran reached a hand out towards it.

“Give it back.” Jorran said hoarsely. “It’s  _ mine, _ give it back to me.”

Bezel frowned and walked up the steps of the throne room, ignoring the burning look sent to her by Desmond. She set the sword on the Mage King’s throne, resting the blade across the armrests of the plush chair.

“Ascalon was forged to  _ protect _ the world. Not to terrify it.” She said aloud, amplifying her voice with a spell so that it carried through the room. She traced her fingertips reverently across the gilt-encrusted scabbard before turning and looking out over the room with disapproval. “This is supposed to be a solemn ceremony. To take up Ascalon is to take up the burden of serving as the shield of our mother Terra.” She fixed her gaze on Jorran. “You may be a stronger warrior than I, Jorran, but a warrior’s ways are not always the answer.”

“It’s not yours! Give it back!” Jorran shouted at her.

Bezel closed her eyes and shook her head. “What need do I have of a sword? Don’t worry, Jorran. When you have  _ need _ of it, it will be waiting for you. But until then, you should heed our father’s wishes. Let it sleep in the vaults for now.”

 

When she opened her eyes again, a forced smile had settled on her face, and she clapped her hands together. “Well, then. Father? With your permission, I think that the ceremony of Ascalon’s successor has been fulfilled. I should like to return to my studies.”

Volkas Lantea took a moment to collect himself, nodding stiffly before he found his words again. “Yes. Yes.” He turned away from Bezel, pointedly ignoring the entreating and miserable stare of his second son, and looked out to the audience. “The ceremony is complete. Court is dismissed.”

As the court crier shouted it out after and the gossips and nobles started to sift out, muttering of what they had seen, the Knight sighed and walked to the foot of the stairs, waiting as Bezel strolled down in a dress she hated wearing to join him.

“Where to, my lady?” He asked her.

“I desire fresh air. Escort me back to my chambers and then gather a light meal from the kitchens. We shall adjourn to the public gardens for a picnic. Oh, and be sure to retrieve some stale bread for the birds there. I do so enjoy watching you make a fool of yourself when you feed them.”

Bezel was playing the part of a princess that was expected, but more and more, flashes of the real her shone through. Just as it had when she held Ascalon. Underneath those stiff words, the Knight heard what she had meant all too clearly. 

_ Get me away from here. Take me where I can breathe again. _

“As you wish, Princess Bezel.” He answered, his smile a thin thing only she could see.

_ I love you like the flower loves the sun. _

 

***

 

The world moved on even as the Knight and Bezel tried their best to stand still. It felt to the Knight as though there were some inexorable force pushing Terra and Atlantis forward, a series of events that had started with the death of Bezel’s uncle and family and  _ his mother _ in Banali City and had cascaded with every event that followed. The debacle at Zolim. The Liar. The slave trade in Ganarus Province under the late Baron Gobeas had just been the latest and most grievous insult, but the ripples of that had been more powerful than he had thought at the time, too wrapped up in his concern for Bezel’s safety.

He was a Mage Knight, formerly of the RRD. In his role with the royal knights as Bezel’s chosen protector, he was required to sit in on briefings from time to time. They were usually boring affairs where the head of the royal knights would speak at length of matters of little importance to anyone but themselves. This briefing, however, set him on edge.

“According to our agents stationed Below, the movement is taking hold throughout Euros, Asa, and Aroca. They call themselves  _ Logosian Adherents, _ and claim to serve the light of wisdom and truth impartially.”

“What are their goals?” Another royal knight that the Knight had no particular animosity or opinion of asked softly. 

“That, we’re less sure of. To change things, the reports indicate; to change the structure of how Atlantis and the rest of Terra operates. They point to Zolim and to the recent unpleasantness in Ganarus as examples for why things are  _ wrong.” _ Their commander informed them. “But how that equates to action?” The man shrugged. “For now, our knights Below are keeping to a  _ watchful _ stance, even though there are many who are arguing that they should be stamped out like a disease. I’m of a mind to see where this leads for now. The atrocities and injuries suffered by those under abused authority are fuel to their movement. For the moment, they are nothing but mewling rabble, screaming because they are powerless to change anything. So long as nothing else stirs them up further, it may end there. That is the hope of those in the  _ watch and wait _ camp.”

“And what is the opinion of the Mage King?” A third royal knight asked.

“No opinion offered.”

“What of his sons, Princes Desmond and Jorran?” The third knight asked again.

“Take a wild guess.” Their commander said, rolling his eyes. The Knight found himself sighing, knowing that Bezel’s brothers would be all too happy to see these Adherents all slaughtered in their beds. It took him a moment to realize that nobody had asked what Bezel’s opinion on the matter was. He blinked and wondered if she had been informed of it as well.

Doubtful. She hadn’t spoken of it to him, and he was suddenly reminded that nobody  _ cared _ what she thought. 

 

“Well. Enough of that, then.” The commander of the royal knights clapped his hands together. “In lighter news, the Sending Stone project has been approved for short-range transmissions, military use only.  _ Some _ good has to come out of all the money that got spent these last two years on it.”

“Has the Princess been informed of this yet?” The Knight asked aloud.

“Oh, she will be.” The commander waved a hand dismissively. “You’re authorized to inform her of it, but if you do, you’re to inform her that it is no longer her project, or her concern. It now falls under the authority of the Mage Knights.”

 

She wouldn’t be happy with the news, especially since she’d solved the riddle and nobody among the royal alchemists had even deigned to listen to her afterwards. The Knight remembered what the chief royal alchemist had uttered to her in exasperation after their last disastrous meeting.  _ ‘You’re full of ideas, princess, but you need more seasoning. Leave the runecrafting and artificing to those who have actual  _ **_experience_ ** _ in doing so successfully.’ _

 

The fools. She was beyond them now, the Knight could feel that keenly. The world kept on moving ahead without them. The Knight wondered for a moment, though, if Bezel wasn’t standing still so much as she was racing ahead of everyone else.

Even him.

 

***

 

_ 4 Months After Bezel’s 16th Birthday _

  
  


The Knight had known that Bezel’s time was limited, and running out. It had started after her 15th birthday, one suitor after another asking for the pleasure of her company on outings, and she’d deftly weaved clear of them with gentle refusals and prior commitments. By her 16th birthday, they had become more insistent. It was an expectation that by her 17th birthday, she would be engaged to be married. Bezel kept refusing and dodging the issue.

It would not be dodged any further. Not when Bezel went storming through the castle after being alerted of certain developments out in the palace gardens. The Knight actually had to work to keep up with her for once, she was all but running in her angered haste.

They found the Mage King and Desmond out with a pack of servants and one young nobleman of twenty winters. The Knight recognized him as Baron Loterfeld, who ran the island province of Galas, adjacent to the larger island of Cault. They were in the midst of some minor sport, with discs of stone being hurled up into the air while the two royals and their noble guest took turns blasting them apart with spell-bolts. 

“Pull!” Desmond shouted with a laugh, and the servants attending them used the springed disk-thrower to lob another stone circle into the air. The oldest prince made to strike it down, his blue aura coalesced around his hand while the Baron watched with a smirk and folded arms.

A bright pink blast shot over their heads and smashed into the target, exploding in fragments that scattered over the rose beds. The reaction of the men was instant and unconscious; they all flinched and ducked, then spun around to search for the source.

They found Bezel standing twenty paces away, fuming and glowing like a magenta eidolon with her hand still pointed and ready to fire again. The Knight, trailing behind her before he came to a stop three steps behind her, couldn’t see her face but he could well imagine it.

_ “How dare you.” _ She hissed, her voice resonant with power.  _ “How dare you try to arrange my life by your wishes.” _

Baron Loterfeld smoothed out the nonexistent wrinkles on his shirt and recovered with a hesitant smile. “My dear Princess Bezel. You look lovelier every day.”

“And you’re as greasy as I remember you being a year ago, Loterfeld.” Bezel snapped back at him, keeping her eyes locked in on her father. “I’ve already told Loterfeld no.  _ Twice. _ And what do I hear but that he’s been announced at the palace and asked to speak to my  _ father _ and my  _ brother _ about important business? What do I hear the palace staff gossiping and whispering about when I step out of my workshop, but that  _ the king has promised Bezel’s hand in marriage?” _

In truth, it had been the Knight who had overheard the rumor from the palace staff and sussed out its source to one of the attendants inside the Court who had been present when Baron Loterfeld had made his offer. Not that Bezel would feel the need to tell them that.

“Bezel, you’ve run around and had your fun and played your little games of invention long enough.” Desmond started out, attempting for diplomacy. He failed utterly as she bristled even more. “It is my duty to rule, Jorran’s to lead our forces, and it will be yours to…”

“Desmond, I swear to mana if you utter a  _ single word _ that isn’t  **advise me when I become Mage King so I don’t crock it all up and make Terra a bigger mess than it is already,** I will slap you so hard that your  _ future children _ will feel it.” Bezel cut him off with a growl. Desmond recoiled a step more when her aura flared up her arm to the whole of her body for a few seconds.

“Bezel. Be reasonable.” The Mage King tried to temper her wrath. “The good Sir Loterfeld here is a capable warrior and a stout defender of Atlantis.”

“My lands are untroubled, milady Bezel, and beautiful.” The brown-haired noble offered. “Anyone who has even a scrap of knowledge of the Royal Court knows that you are a unique young woman, and that you have an unusual respect for the lands Below. The wealth I can offer the throne of Atlantis for your hand is sizable, and you would undoubtedly find happiness as mistress of my estates.”

Bezel’s aura fluctuated again, and the three men shifted nervously. The Knight found himself in the unenviable position of having to do something to calm her down. His usual methods of doing so were unavailable, he doubted he’d be able to palm her stomach and nuzzle her neck in sight of her father and somehow survive the day with his limbs or his manhood intact. He settled for stepping up behind her and touching her shoulder in sight of everyone with his right hand, while his unseen left traced the curve in the small of her back where nobody could see it. By the time she stiffened under his touch and then turned to him, he’d stepped back away, unfazed by her blazing pink aura. It died down as she searched his eyes.

“You are a princess.” He said to her softly. “Don’t react. Advance.”

 

It was sound advice, not only tactically but in matters of diplomacy as well. Reacting meant always resting on the back foot, waiting for others to make the first move. It meant surrendering the initiative. 

He should have remembered that the Bezel he was in love with today was not the same Bezel of three years ago, or two. Or even one. If he had, perhaps her next move wouldn’t have surprised him as badly as it did.

With her magic released and her rage tempered, Bezel gave him a nod and stepped forward.

“Very well, father. You wish me to be reasonable? Then here is my declaration.” She folded her hands in front of her, leaving the Knight to look to the Mage King, his son, and the princess’s would-be fiancee for what she was doing. 

 

“From this day forth, any man who wishes me to even  _ think _ of considering their suit for my hand must first best my appointed knight guardian in combat. As any man who would become my husband would thus be charged with safeguarding my life and the life of any children that result from our union, it is only fitting that they must first prove that they are better for the task of serving as my protector than the knight I selected for the responsibility when I was 13.” She inclined her head to Baron Loterfeld with mock gravitas before her head swung in the direction of the Mage King, who blanched under what must have been a truly withering gaze. “I am not some poor local consular’s daughter who can be snatched up and torn from her dreams and ambitions just for the honor of marrying into a higher status. I am a daughter of the House of Lantea, the Princess of Atlantis.” It was a barb with a double meaning, one that only the Mage King would understand. In protecting herself, Bezel conjured up the memory of her dead mother, a woman whose lot in life was a point of eternal, contentious bitterness between herself and her father. The Mage King went even paler, wrought with veiled grief.

Satisfied at what she saw, Bezel turned her head back towards the Baron. “If you wish me to  _ seriously _ consider your suit, Loterfeld, then stop playing with clay targets in our backyard and draw steel against the only Mage Knight who survived the Zolim Incident. The knight who protected me from corrupt nobles and the creatures from the stars in Ganarus. Otherwise, I give not a damn what prospective agreements you and my  _ father _ and my  _ brother _ thought up. You aren’t marrying them, I don’t think. And if you don’t have the courage and resolve and  _ ability _ to stand and defeat my Knight, then you are welcome to depart these grounds as quickly as your feet will allow. I have greater problems to solve than who I will marry.”

 

The Knight found his lip curling slightly in approval of her bold proposal. She had thrown down a gauntlet, a true challenge that most of her suitors would balk away from, and…

Wait. What? He blinked and realized that she had just set him up as a  _ roadblock _ between herself and any prospective suitors. Somehow he kept the surprise off of his face and smoothed out his features into a blank mask as he looked at Baron Loterfeld, who looked back at him before balking.

“Um. That...I think, perhaps, my offer was made in haste.” Loterfeld stammered, going pale when the Knight flared his own aura, which was now a soft blue just a shade shy of the deep cerulean that Jorran possessed. “However, your declaration does not carry the weight of the Mage King behind it, and…”

“It does.” Volkas Lantea said with a long exhale. The noble spun and gaped at the monarch of all Terra, and Volkas stared back at him. “I find this to be a worthwhile proposal. You wish to court my daughter? Then prove you are worthy of the honor.”

Loterfeld crumpled with that. “I retract my offer. I have no desire to cross swords with your knight protector.”

“Good.” Bezel bit the word out. “Then you may leave. Some of us have work to do.” She spun around and strolled away, giving the Knight a sidewards grin as she did so. He watched her all but saunter away in satisfaction and relief, then felt the Mage King’s gaze on him.

The older man narrowed his eyes as he watched the Knight with new suspicion. The Knight settled his nerves and bowed slightly. “Your majesty. Your highness.  _ Baron.” _ He said to them all, and then went after Bezel.

 

She was giggling a little when he caught up to her back inside the corridors of the palace, and he groaned. “I wish you would have warned me that you were going to do that.”

“Oh, relax. It worked, didn’t it?” She said to him. “And be reasonable. Even if some of these puffed up buffoons who keep slobbering over me somehow work up the nerve to challenge you to a duel, do you really expect to lose?”

“No warrior is invincible, highness.” He cautioned her, and she paused in the hallway, turning to face him. He found himself looking around them, wary for eavesdroppers. There was only one maidservant at the other end of the hall, dusting some of the paintings hung along the way. “Bezel.” He said in a much softer voice. “What if I lose?”

She shook her head and took his gloved hand in her own. “You won’t. And if you did? I would refuse them still.” 

“Until your father insisted on it.”

That was enough to make her scowl and reach up for the collar of his mail, pulling him down until their foreheads were pressed together.

“Then we would  _ run.”  _ She hissed at him, closing her eyes while her hand trembled and came to rest against his armored chest. “Are you my Knight?” Bezel asked him shakily.

“Always.” He whispered back, cursing that he could not kiss her here in the halls of the palace.

 

***

 

The first challenger to respond to Bezel’s (Mage King approved) edict was another Eurosian noble four days later, one from the Malam Province along the southern edge of the continent. He was a man in his mid-twenties who had trained under one of the knights that had schooled with Solern Drake, the instructor that the Knight had so thoroughly humiliated to get Bezel out from under his tutelage. The noble favored the same duelist’s style that Drake had. The Knight tore him apart with a mana-blunted sword and left him with a fractured clavicle, a broken arm, and a concussion in two minutes.

The next challenger had come two days later, while the Knight had been in line for his midday meal. The noble, a fellow in his thirties, had walked down into the servant’s dining hall with no regard for status or station and slapped him across the face with a leather glove, hard enough so that the Knight dropped his tray.

He took particular pleasure in beating that fellow in a minute and thirty seconds...and broke his hands while he was at it. The damage wasn’t so severe that the noble would never be able to use them again, but his middle finger had a bend that wouldn’t go away even after he visited the healers.

Then there had been the Arocan noble who ruled over Zolim, who had led a brutal crackdown in the wake of the Code Violet that had blooded him and resulted in the appearance of the monster from Beyond the Void known as The Liar. He came at the Knight with sharp-edged steel and spells meant to maim and kill.

A minute later, the Knight was bleeding from cuts on his arms and a deeper wound on his side where an incineration blast had come too close, and the nobleman in his 40’s lay unconscious on the ground, his sword hand severed clean off at the wrist. Bezel had refused on having  _ anyone else _ treat the Knight aside from her, which she did, fretting the entire time about how any of her challengers thought it was a good idea to use  _ lethal force _ in an honor duel.

Three weeks after her declaration, the tongues were wagging freely. Why would the Knight fight so fiercely on her behalf? Why would he risk his own life to spare her from an arranged marriage? And why was the princess so dead set on refusing every offer for her hand? It had never been a great secret in the servant’s halls how devoted the Knight was to her. The story of how he’d stabbed the hand of a man who insinuated that he’d been taking advantage of her sexually had been the focus of a solid week where he found himself sitting alone with nobody sitting by him, but everyone staring and whispering. The Knight was used to ignoring those glances, tuning out those whispers. He didn’t dare react to them and betray how he really felt. Not on Atlantis. Not in the viper’s nest.

 

It was harder to ignore a summons from the Mage King. Even an informal one. That the missive came right after he had walked in from his old home and before he could report to stand vigil outside Bezel’s chambers was certainly a carefully chosen event. Bezel would wonder where he’d gone off to, and then would lose herself in worry. The patterns of their life in Atlantis were scripted and formulaic.

For all the power he had, for all his skill in combat and the confidence that came with living his strange dual life, the Knight was still a lad of 17. He found himself reminded well of that fact as he was escorted to the Mage King’s personal study by helmeted royal knights that said nothing, preserving their anonymity. One knocked on the door, and at the king’s voice answering from within, they opened the door and stepped back, making a path for the Knight to step inside.

The Mage King was not sitting at his desk, but was instead standing by the enormous window next to one of the room’s bookcases, wearing simpler clothing than he did for his Court appearances and staring out through the glass.

“You summoned me, your Majesty?” The Knight asked with a soft cough.

“Yes. I did.” Volkas Lantea said to him, and finally turned around to face him. “I am led to understand that there may be another challenge for the honor of courting my daughter later today. Three, in fact. After your prior victories, Bezel’s prospective suitors might be wising up. I don’t think that any of them will rely on lethal force again, at least.”

The Knight pressed his lips together and nodded stiffly. “Three duels may prove troublesome.”

“They mean to tire you out, I suspect. Are you up for that challenge?”

“I am her Knight. My life is hers.” The words were automatic and instinctive, and the Mage King raised an eyebrow at them. He shifted a little and looked away. “...I’ve faced worse. Your majesty.”

“Yes.” The ruler of the world said distantly. “I suppose you have.” There was a pause then and the Knight looked up to meet the eyes of his king. Something akin to understanding and regret was there on his face then, but it faded quickly for a firm scowl. “I am not deaf to the whispers and the rumors that pervade my home, knight. Many claim that there is some impropriety between you and the princess. That she issued her edict because she thinks herself  _ in love _ with her chosen knight protector.”

“I would not presume to know the state of her highness’s mind.” The Knight somehow grated out. “But perhaps she merely wished to have a  _ choice _ in who she would spend her years with.”  _ Like her mother didn’t. _

Volkas harrumphed. “She speaks to you about a great deal, I see.” The Knight felt the sudden urge to shrug, and somehow refrained. “The Mage Knights serve at the pleasure of the Mage King. Did you know that?” The Knight did, it had been part of the courses that he took at the Academy. It seemed the sort of question that didn’t require an answer, so the Knight waited for Volkas to press on. “You have been granted a great many liberties. I understand that you even live away from the palace. Such arrangements are not unheard of, but they are usually dependent on a knight who is married and is raising a family, for the palace is not suitable for child-rearing.”

“Merely being prepared.” The Knight said. “When I am ready to raise a family, there will be a home waiting for them. But that is some years away yet.”

The Mage King stared at him, and somehow he found the courage to stare back. Volkas finally gestured to his desk, and to the plain wooden chair set in front of it. “Sit.” So ordered, the Knight did so, and Volkas moved around and sank into the finer, more comfortable chair on the other side.

“You are good at disguising your feelings, but there is enough in how you act around her, and how my daughter glows in your presence to make clear what those feelings are.” Volkas drummed his fingers on the surface of the desk. “You defend her as a good knight should, but whatever feelings you have, or that  _ might _ be developing between you, they can never come to pass.” The king’s face turned hard. “At the end of the day, she is a princess, and you are her servant. You live in different worlds, belong to different spheres.”

“She will choose for herself.” The Knight blurted out, and immediately regretted it. He bit his lip to keep from flinching. The Mage King drew in a slow breath and held it. The exhale was even slower.

“I will make this easy for you.” He said to the Knight. “For your achievements, for your service, and for your  _ silence _ I could see fit to reward you. The Mage Knights serve at the discretion of the king. I would see fit to have you discharged honorably, with your retiree’s stipend and a sizable bonus.”

“In exchange for what, sire?”

“That you will bury whatever foolish designs you have on my daughter, and convince her to do the same. That you will leave Atlantis and live in peace. You would have enough wealth to build a mansion of your own. To live comfortably. To take a wife, or two wives if you wished. But that easy life hinges on you walking away. Now. Before something terrible happens.”

The Knight burned at the offer. “I refuse.” 

“You cannot…!”

“I can. I do.” The Knight cut the king off, too angry now to care about the disastrous breach of protocol. “I am  _ Her Knight. _ I took a vow to hold her life sacred above my own. None can release me from her service, save for Princess Bezel alone. So long as she wishes me in her company, no threat you make, no temptation you offer will convince me. Even if you cast me out, I will remain her servant. She is stronger and wiser than anyone in this entire palace thinks she is, sire. She knows her own mind, and I trust her.”

That was the moment that the door to the Mage King’s study was thrown open with greater force than it required, the hinges creaking ominously as it smashed into the wooden wall with a thud. The Princess Bezel stormed in, furious and utterly beautiful in her rage, not relaxing a bit when she laid eyes on the Knight or her father, arranged in a way that made it clear their talk hadn’t been a friendly one.

Bezel breathed through her nose and huffed. “Right.” She marched over and tugged the Knight’s arm, pulling him up out of his chair. “We’re leaving.”

“I am not through speaking with this knight, daughter.” Volkas warned her. Bezel stared back at her father, then turned to look down at him. 

“Are you my Knight?”

“Yes.” He answered, his voice thick enough with the feelings that the Mage King had evoked in him that he had to swallow after. He heard the Mage King let out a soft noise, but his eyes didn’t leave Bezel’s. “My life is yours.”

She smiled and the world realigned into its proper orbit. “Your place is by my side. Now come on. There’s a trip I’m planning next week Below to look into the manufacture and distribution of the Sending Stones, and I require your assistance.”

“Always, your highness.” The Knight said, standing up and pulling his arm back until his hand slipped into hers. “I thought that they had militarized that project, though.”

“Then it’s a good thing that I received an invitation from Knight Commander Sloane to come down and observe. I would so hate to disappoint him, and he would undoubtedly like to assess your current combat skills.” Their conversation was easy and flowing and proper, even if the way he held her hand wasn’t. That she allowed it in the presence of her father, that he had even  _ dared, _ the Knight realized, said more about how panicked she really felt in finding him dragged before her father in private session.

“As you wish.” He smiled, and let himself be led away. His stomach still turned, but it was slowly unclenching. Let the servants gossip. Let the nobles wonder. Let the Mage King himself try and threaten him again. None of it mattered. Nothing mattered but the safety of Bezel Lantea, and the love that they shared between them. To keep everything he had intact, he would face down a hundred hungry men and punish them for their predations.

Bezel stopped at the door of the study and turned, and the Knight blinked at the dead, biting stare she leveled past him and to her father. “Don’t ever threaten My Knight again.” She said, and breezed out the door.

The Knight risked a glance backwards and saw the Mage King sitting at his desk, his face pale and his eyes downcast. There were a dozen reasons he could be looking so miserable. The Knight gave up on attempting to deduce which one was accurate.

 

***

 

_ The Knight’s Home _

_ Outer District, Atlantis _

_ Evening _

 

The pull between them had always been there, but it had only grown stronger since the Geenes had refurbished his old home and gifted it back to him. It was a kindness that both he and Bezel had needed, a place of their own where they could drop every mask and just be themselves, a young man and a young woman. When she had forged her Heartstone out of the mana of Terra and the stars beyond and bound it to her by her hair and the hair of her mother and the silver ring of promise that once had been Alastair Sloane’s, he had lost himself in the pull of unbridled sexuality and passion.

He was her Knight, after all, and he never gave her anything less than his absolute best.

 

As the light of day faded, the Knight finished cleaning up from his dinner and set the last dish onto the drying rack next to the washtub. He heard his front door open and turned, smiling easily when he caught sight of a hooded gray cloak he knew too well. Sure enough, as soon as the cloaked figure had the door closed and barred again, a hand swept up to reveal the bright red hair and the eager smile of Bezel.

“Honey. I’m home.” She greeted him, and he chuffed and went to her, pulling her into his arms and kissing her softly, but deeply. They separated a few seconds later and he let himself look into her emerald eyes.

“Any trouble coming here?”

“No.” She answered, and her smile turned into a smirk. “The runes I’ve keyed to Atlantis’s leylines in my bedroom are working properly. Were anyone to dare to step inside they would find ‘me’ sleeping in my bed, and were they to try and wake me, they would find ‘me’ very irate at being disturbed. They will remain active until I return on the morrow.”

“You solved the timing problem, then?” He murmured, running a hand through her hair.

She giggled and took his hand away from her head, gently pressing a kiss into his palm. “You say that like it was hard to do.”

The Knight sighed. “Do you think anyone else could do  _ half _ the things you seem to achieve with such ease, love?”

Her eyes burned at the endearment, and she pulled away to loosen the bindings of her cloak. “Everyone else has it wrong. It isn’t your sword that’s dangerous, it’s your mouth.”

The Knight chuckled, watching the rosy blush settle over her cheeks as she removed her outer cloak to reveal a dark blue and purple nightrobe beneath, opaque and flowing.

“Only to you. You make me say such strange things.”

She sighed and hung up her cloak next to the door, then took his hand and led him into the bedroom. They sat down on the edge and then she turned to him with narrowing eyes. With practiced movements, she unbuttoned his tunic and pulled it off of him, and hissed at the bruises on his skin. “Damnit. You said that the challenge today caused you no injury!”

“Permanent injury.” He corrected her. “Bruises will heal.” She huffed and closed her eyes, pink light spilling over her fingers as she traced them over the yellowing spots along his chest and his arms where glancing blows had fallen. The magic tickled over his skin, taking away the pain and causing the damage to fade as if several days of natural healing had passed all at once. Her lips followed her fingers, and he shivered as she licked just above the worst one, teasing his nipple. 

Bezel slumped against him and he held her close. “I hate this.” She whispered, and he felt a slight tremble run through her. “I’m sorry. I thought - I thought that they would have given up by now. I thought after one of them was foolish enough to try and  _ kill you _ that…”

He pressed fingertips to her lips to stop her from babbling, then laid a kiss onto the top of her head. “Maybe they just hate me that much. Or perhaps they’re jealous.”

“I’m not blind, you know. I’m not deaf. I know what people say about you. About what people think about me. But I’m not some silly girl. And you’ve never,  _ never _ taken advantage of me.” She said fiercely. “Why can’t they just leave us alone?”

“You will always be a princess, Bezel.” He reminded her, turning bolder and allowing himself to run a hand down her back, tracing the bumps of her spine. She shivered under his touch and pulled in tight against him. “I will only ever be a knight. And if your father has his way, I might not even be that much longer.”

She growled again. “No. No, he doesn’t get to do that. Nobody gets to  _ decide _ who I love. Nobody gets to choose who my husband will be, but me alone. And I’ve already chosen.”

His throat closed up on him. “You - you can’t mean that.” He squeaked out, trembling as his blood roared in his ears. Bezel pulled back from him, her emerald eyes shining with unshed tears.

“I told you. The very first night we stayed here. The very first time we made love. I  _ love you, _ and I will have no other. Ceremony or no, you are my Knight. I trust you with my heart, and I want you. As my husband.”

They were both crying then, and his kisses were hard and fierce, making her gasp.

“Say it.” She begged him, as he stripped away her nightgown to reveal the sheer satin shift beneath. 

“Will you be my wife?” He croaked.

“Yes.” She shuddered, as he scooped his hands under her and squeezed, pulling her against him.  _ “Yes, husband.” _

He found his pants unbuttoned, pushed, kicked away from him. His hands pulled at the delicate fabric of her negligee, moving it away until his callused hands were tracing deliciously bare skin. She let out whimpers of adoration and keening pleas as he worked her to a froth.

“Mine.” He kissed her navel, feeling the muscles underneath ripple as his fingers teased her to a boil.

“Yours.” She whined, reaching for him and making him gasp. “Please.  _ Please.” _

He laid her down on their bed, sought her eyes out one last time as she nodded, and slid into her, making her arch her back and cry soundlessly. 

The pull between them had always been there. It had never been so strong before. There was no denying it then, or ever again. His wife. She called him  _ husband. _

“Mine.” He repeated, stoking her fires with every thrust. Her legs and arms wrapped around his back, trapping him. Like he would disappear if she didn’t. Laughable. As if he could ever let her go.

“Yours.” She moaned.

“Say it. Please!” He panted.

“Yours!” Bezel cried out, and the Heartstone hung from the choker around her throat gleamed gold. “Mine!”

“Always yours.” He promised, an oath to Bezel and to Mana and to Atlantis. “My heart is yours.” She could do nothing but gasp and whimper in response, lost in the sensation of him then. He followed her into bliss, and after, when they lay sated and joined and cuddled beneath the blankets, he followed her into sleep.

 

***

 

_ The Capital City of Magrud _

_ Barbuti Province, The Continent of Aroca _

_ 6 Months after Bezel’s 16th Birthday _

 

Barbuti Province sat on the western edge of Aroca, the capital city along the shores of the Lantean Ocean and the bulk of its land dedicated to the lush tropical forests that stretched almost all the way to the coastline. It was home to a thriving fishing industry as well as timber and lush fruits, but aside from the production of raw materials used elsewhere Below and up in Atlantis, the only notable thing about it was the presence of a garrison of RRD Mage Knights who oversaw the coastline and kept a watchful eye out for trouble. It was that garrison that Princess Bezel and the Knight had traveled to, having flown from the 242nd’s base camp under loose military orders to ‘calibrate’ the Sending Stones which had been deployed around Aroca for seamless communication between the various military units. They may have been content to utilize them as short-range alternatives to far-messaging magic and mages, but the Knight knew his Bezel. She wouldn’t be satisfied until she could perfect the technology like how she had wanted.

It would have been just their luck that the garrison happened to be stationed in a city going through a period of unrest.

“The Logosian Adherents?” Bezel murmured with a frown, glancing to the Knight as they spoke with the adjutant base commander. “It was my understanding that they were a non-violent group with reasonable grievances.”

“That hasn’t been our experience, your highness.” The man said gruffly. “Identifying them has been difficult. The leaders keep themselves well-hidden, but their agents have taken to distributing pamphlets, fomenting dissent. We’ve kept a lid on it for now, but given how widespread the movement is in Aroca and elsewhere? It’s only a matter of time before things get out of hand.”

Just as was usual for their brand of luck, the adjutant’s warning was interrupted by the sound of a great explosion a few blocks away. 

“You were saying?” The Knight deadpanned, as the adjutant snarled and extended his palm skywards, launching a yellow mana flare up that detonated in bright light and loud noise to alert everyone in the base and get them moving out.

“Stay here, your highness.” The adjutant told Bezel, giving the Knight a nod. “With your protector here, and with you behind our guarded walls, you’ll be safe from the danger.” She got that look on her face again like she wanted to argue the point, and the Knight set a hand on her elbow.

“Please, your highness.” He said, and she deflated and conceded to the request.

“Very well, we shall remain here. Good luck, adjutant.” The harried knights of the 186th RRD garrison raced for the gates with armor set in place and swords drawn, and the adjutant followed, leaving a token force behind on the perimeter and within the garrison to defend it. And the addition of the Knight and Bezel.

The princess sighed and unslung her Arocan staff, twisting her hands over the reinforced hardwood with irritation. “We should be out there.”

“I thought you didn’t approve of making war.” The Knight said to her, raising an eyebrow. “That was always more your brother’s bent.”

“There’s being a warmonger like Jorran, my Knight, and then there’s being useful.” Bezel countered with a huff. “My people could be in trouble out there. The knights suspect insurgents, but what if it is just an accident they’re racing towards? A runaway working or a broken mana reservoir from some greater artifice out there and lives are in the balance?”

“If it’s some accident they’re headed for, then they’ll deal with it and save the people. It’s what the RRD does.” The Knight pacified her. “They end threats and they protect. They aren’t like other knights.”

 

Neither of them had expected the wall around the garrison compound to suddenly be blown apart and knocked in by an explosion, and neither had the few knights still on the base. Which was probably the point of it, the Knight realized. After he and Bezel lowered their hastily erected magic shields to protect them from the dust and the debris (His blue, hers pink) he drew out his sword and growled. 

“Stay behind me, princess.”

“No.” Bezel said, sending mana into her staff while her Heartstone’s runic lines gleamed pink under her throat. “My place is  _ beside _ you. And I don’t run. Not from this.”

He could have pressed the point, argued, tried to fight her on it. The look in her eyes told him exactly how well any efforts in that regard would be treated, and he huffed as the first of the attackers, mostly Arocans but with a sprinkling of lighter-skinned Eurosians as well came racing in. They were screaming their fool heads off and glowing with red auras, brandishing spears and small wooden shields and grain scythes and hunting knives. Not really weapons of true warfare. Weapons of desperation. 

But weapons of desperation could still kill. As the first of the stunned knights pulled himself from the rubble and tried to defend himself, they fell upon him and brutally stabbed and hacked him apart. The man screamed, and the Knight’s blood burned.

It was too much like the trauma he had suffered as a boy in Dapana City. Wild, angry lunatics charging in with weapons drawn and wild looks in their eyes, killing everyone in their way.

In Dapana City, they had killed his mother. They had killed Bezel’s extended family and almost killed her.

These criminals would kill  _ nobody else _ here in Magrud. His power exploded out of him and he charged ahead, ignoring Bezel’s shout of dismay.

 

It was over too fast. They were desperate people, worn thin and ragged, they wore no armor and had never been trained for combat. With the Knight acting as a rallying point, the few knights who had been guarding the garrison recovered and retaliated, putting down the threat. The Knight was the most vicious and capable of all of them, and he didn’t stop, not until…

Bezel’s hand on his arm, her pink aura glowing brightly, cutting and containing his own from where he’d been melting the face off of one attacker who had died screaming. 

“Stop! Please!  _ Please, stop this!” _ She howled at him. He gasped for air, worn out and exhausted by how much mana he’d expended. It was the tears in her eyes that made him quiet, that made him sting with misplaced guilt.

“Nobody threatens you. Not again. Never again.” He vowed, with the barest hint of a growl. Bezel stared at him aghast, and the Knight felt confused. Surely she knew just how dangerous he was. He’d killed to protect her before, he would kill in her name again. 

Bezel blinked and took a step back away from him, averting her eyes. She walked through the courtyard full of the dead and the dying, shaking her head before turning to one Arocan native, lying on the ground with his arm shot off by an incineration blast and bleeding from a stab wound through the stomach. The Knight had seen wounds like those. Without immediate medical intervention, he would die. More than Bezel could provide, surely.

Still, she knelt down beside the dying man and brought power into her hand. Not a true healing spell, but one that would dull the pain he was feeling. One that would ease his passing. Bezel stroked the man’s hair and looked into his glassy eyes, and the Knight moved to the side to watch her sad face and the man’s reaction as his agony eased off.

_ “Why would you do this? Why did you attack?” _ She asked him in soft Arocan. The man’s eyes widened as he heard her speak.

_ “They attacked us first. My family is dead. I will join them soon.”  _ His breathing was shallow, and he weakly tried to raise his arm. Bezel took his hand and held it, and he gently squeezed it.  _ “Are you - are you the great Bezel I have heard of?” _

Bezel’s throat tightened. “I am Bezel.” She said with a dull croak.  _ “Who attacked you? When?” _

His hand tightened on hers, and with what little strength he had left, the Arocan man pulled her in closer. The Knight took a few steps closer, hearing the wheeze in his voice, the ominous death rattle he knew too well. The criminal wasn’t long for the world now.

_ “A day east. Half a day north. In the jungle. Look for…”  _ He shivered and his eyes rolled up into his head. Somehow, he kept breathing.  _ “Don’t let us die for nothing.” _

He expired at last, and Bezel held the dead man’s hand for another few seconds before resting it over his chest and standing back up. Her face was a blank mask.

Minutes later, the bulk of the garrison’s force returned, ready for a battle that was already finished. The adjutant glared at the havoc before turning to Bezel, concern on his face. “Your highness, are you all right? Did these Adherent bastards harm you?”

“I’m fine.” Bezel reassured him, looking around the courtyard as the knights started gathering up the corpses for burial. “They did not harm me.”

“My men said you knelt down next to one who was dying before he passed away. What did he say?”

Bezel blinked a couple of times and looked back at the adjutant, frowning. “He was speaking in his native language. How would I understand it?”

_ Lie, _ the Knight placed, but kept his countenance. Years of hiding his true feelings within the palace had prepared him to do that much. The adjutant harrumphed and nodded.

“Just so, my lady. These primitives jabbering on in their pidgin dialect gets positively annoying most days. Is there anything I can do for you? With all of this mayhem, I’m afraid that we’ll have to postpone your look at our Sending Stones…”

“No, that’s fine.” Bezel held up a hand to stay him from talking any more. “I think it would be wise if I took my leave of Magrud for a while. I don’t believe it’s safe here for a member of the royal house.”

The adjutant seemed very relieved at the suggestion. “Very well, my lady. I’m sorry for the trouble, but I am glad you are unharmed. My best wishes for your health and happiness in the future.”

“Thank you.” Bezel thanked him diplomatically, then started walking for the skyskiff yard. The Knight fell in step behind her.

“You’re angry.”

“I’m disappointed and I have questions.” Bezel corrected him. “And I’m angry. We need to get out of here.”

The Knight thought about it. “Perhaps a trip out into the wilderness would be good.”

“Perhaps so. I think a flight over the jungle would be appropriate.” Bezel mused. “There’s one spot in particular I’d  _ dearly love _ to get a closer look at.”

The Knight ran the calculations. Assuming that the man was speaking of walking distances…

“With a skyskiff, I think we could get there by late afternoon.”

“Good.” She said, the final word on the matter. The Knight still felt off kilter, though.

She hadn’t looked at him since the fight came to its grisly end.

 

***

 

_ Late Afternoon _

_ Unknown Village, Northeast of Magrud _

  
  


It hadn’t been very hard to find at all, after the fact. The lush jungles of central Aroca were beautiful in their own right, but there were places where the trees gave way to rivers and waterfalls, and occasionally other patches of ground. There were other villages and other villagers they’d spotted along the way in the midst of the jungle, where trees had been whittled away in places to make clearings for animal pens and fields and lodgings. As they flew by those, the natives ran for cover, grabbed their children and hid away. It was unnerving to the Knight, who was unused to inspiring such terror with a single small skyskiff, and it put Bezel even more on edge as they flew on.

The village that the now dead Arocan outlaw had described hadn’t been very hard to find, and it had everything to do with the fact that it  _ no longer existed. _ In a clearing that still had smouldering trees around its edges, they found nothing but blackened ruins and debris and mounds of overturned dirt.

The Knight didn’t realize the significance until they landed and Bezel, who had been investigating one, let out a cry and fell to her knees with a hand pressed to her mouth.

They were graves. Dozens of graves, perhaps fifty to sixty in all. Whoever had survived had taken the time to bury the dead and mourn them before they left. Before…

The Knight stepped away from Bezel and went over to the charred, collapsed ruins of a hut that had fallen in on itself after taking too much damage. The ash and the charred timbers were cool to the touch. “This happened a while ago. Days. Maybe a week.”

Bezel traced a hand over the grave dirt. “This - it’s fresh, but rained on. Settled. Merciful mana. If those people who attacked us came from here…” She stood up, shaking her head. “Look around. I’m going to start on the opposite end, see what I can find.”

 

The Knight hesitated, not wanting to get more than a mana-fueled jump away from her if they were to be attacked, but she arched an eyebrow at him and gripped her staff tighter. She looked as though she wanted to weep, and she clearly didn’t want to do it around him.

He spent several minutes on the other side of the destroyed village away from Bezel, keeping to his own research. Using his magic to fuel managrasp spells, he lifted away pieces of debris from the smashed in houses, biting his lip as he found more bodies and the ruins of lives. He found other things as well, though. Here and there, he found scraps of cloth or ensorceled missives that bore a mark he knew from his briefings. The sigil, such as it was, of the Logosian Adherents and their movement. It was an answer and a cause for why the place had been attacked. What he didn’t know was who had attacked first. Had the Adherents attacked the province or the Mage Knights to provoke the village’s destruction, or had this attack come first and the survivor’s strike on the garrison in Magrud been in response to it?

 

He shook off the questions and returned to Bezel’s side, finding her kneeling in the charred dirt and holding something in her hand.

“What did you find?” She asked him distantly.

“The Logosian Adherents had a presence here.” He said, holding up one of the small cloth banners that had been burned along its edges.

Bezel sniffed and dragged the sleeve of her shirt under her nose before she took it from him. “Did you find one in every ruined hut you looked through?”

“No. I didn’t check every hut, though.”

 

“It’s senseless.” Bezel spat out, and he turned to look at her again. She had definitely been crying. “Why were these people killed?”

“Because they were Adherents. Because they attacked Magrud!”

“That happened after this!” She pressed him, jerking up to her feet. “You saw the people who attacked the garrison! They weren’t warriors! You didn’t have to kill them, none of them had to die!”

“They were attacking Mage Knights! They were going to hurt you, kill you!” He snapped back. “Why are you suddenly so surprised by all of this? I’m a knight, it’s my duty to protect you. It’s my duty to put down the threats to you and the kingdom of Atlantis! You weren’t fazed at all when we fought against the  _ exenos _ and all those corrupt knights in Ganarus, why did you look at me today like I was a monster?!”

Bezel blinked at him rapidly. “I know you  _ can _ kill people. So can I. But I don’t have to.” She reached up behind her back and tapped her Arocan staff. “I choose  _ not _ to. When you took lives in Ganarus, when you fought The Liar and her minions in Zolim, we didn’t have a choice. We were fighting to save lives. We were fighting men and monsters who were trained and armed to kill, and had no reason at all to hold back.”

Shifting the object in her hands and tucking it under one arm, she poked him in the chest with a bitter glare. “Those men who attacked the garrison at Magrud weren’t warriors. Did you see any of them who were stronger than an orange? Did  _ any _ of them have any military training? Did you see a lick of armor on them, were their weapons meant to kill men or the animals that they would hunt? You had a choice between stopping them and killing them. You’ve never killed  _ anyone _ you fought in any of your duels to keep the suitors away from me, even when they were trying to kill you. You  _ chose _ to kill those men in Magrud. Why?”

The Knight clenched his teeth. “You know why.”

“I really don’t.” Bezel said. “You have to tell me.”

“Because those men had nothing left to lose.” He told her flatly. “They knew they didn’t stand a chance, but they attacked and fought anyways. They didn’t care if they died. All they wanted was to hurt people. They wanted to hurt  _ you.” _

“And you still had a choice!” Bezel yelled at him. “We could have knocked them out! I could have - I could have hit them with repulsion blasts, laid them out cold!”

“Why do you care so much about a bunch of murderous outlaws?!” He yelled back at her. “They weren’t important! Not compared to you!”

Bezel sucked in air as her eyes widened. The anger in the air stilled and collapsed, leaving him hollowed out and her in shock.

“Your mother would hate to hear you say that.” She finally said in a quiet voice. “She always told you how important you were. She knew how important everyone was.”

“She believed in people.” The Knight conceded, sad and bitter and too worn out to be angry anymore. The pain didn’t go away, though. “And they killed her for it.”

Bezel fell back a step and went pale. “You think - I’m not…”

“I lost my mother.” The Knight told her, letting the hurt in his voice come out. “I’m not losing my wife.” She struggled to answer that, and finally gave up, holding out the thing in her arms to him. “What’s this?” He muttered, taking it from her and looking it over.

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen it before.” She confessed, eager to change the subject. The Knight frowned and spun it around in his hand, noting the sharp edges. It was an explosive shell, the kind that the RRD sometimes used to conserve magic during engagements where they could bring the armaments of their skyships to bear. What confused him was that any of it was still intact. Explosive shells didn’t stay this intact unless they failed to explode. And this shell didn’t have any manufacturing markings. The explosive ordnance sparingly used by the RRD  _ always _ had markings. And it didn’t have a tapered end, either, it was more of a canister.

“It’s like a shell.” He told her. “But it’s not RRD. There’s no identifiers on it.”

Bezel frowned. “What kind of shell?”

“Explosive. But that’s the weird thing.” The Knight went on, pointing to the holes in the side of it. “If it went off like it should have, there would be  _ nothing _ left here for us to look at but fragments. And you couldn’t fire this off like a shell, the shape’s wrong.”

“Is it safe to open up?” Bezel asked.

The Knight conjured up a bubble shield around it with his blue mana, hovering it in midair. “Probably, but we should be safe about it. Can you manipulate it?”

“Better than most, I’d think.” Bezel mused, and a flare of pink light glowed inside of his shield, surrounding the object. “I use my managrasp for fine control, not for throwing things around.” The Knight huffed at the jibe made at his expense and let it slide. She was angry enough already, and he felt no need to push it further. In time, she’d accept that he’d acted in the right back in Magrud. She just had to think about it first. Bezel thought about everything.

She made a noise and the Knight refocused on the canister as the end popped off. “Screw-top assembly.” She said, speaking more to herself. “Hollow interior, but there’s some kind of framework inside. Damaged, though.” Wrapped in her managrasp grip, the guts of the canister slid out, catching here and there on the twisted bits.

Bezel made another noise, one more perturbed than before. “A  _ mana reservoir? _ What would…” She stuttered out and her eyes went wide when she looked to the mangled assembly attached around the runic sphere designed to channel and store the power of a mage. The Knight frowned and looked at it as well, knowing enough about military-grade artificing to pick out that there were two other components attached to it, but not much beyond that. He was more worried about Bezel’s reaction, because she was forgetting to breathe again.

“It’s not going to explode. It can’t.” She whispered, and he took that as a signal to lower his bubble shield. The empty canister fell to the ground with a thud, the interior casing and its mangled components floated over and came to rest in Bezel’s shaking hands. She just held it, and stared at it, and didn’t say a word.

“What is it, Bezel?” The Knight asked her finally. She shifted her grip on it.

“It’s a bomb.” She said, swallowing as her words hung thick in the air. “A mana fueled bomb.” A spark of pink light manifested over it, hovering over the mana reservoir. “Mana. Gathered here.” It moved to the piece mangled beyond recognition,, and under the small mage light, a damaged rune gleamed faintly against the charred metal. “An emitter. Here. It’s what detonated it.” The mage light moved to the other end of the assembly and flickered as Bezel lost control of it. She never lost control of her spells, though. Until now. The sniffle she let out made clear why.

“Tell me you recognize this.” She whispered. The Knight leaned in, peered closer. He looked at the thin layers of manalattice and rune-inscribed metal that formed it. He frowned and looked even closer, and it took him longer than it should have before his mind kicked in and alerted him to why it seemed so familiar.

The design of it was eerily close to the capacitor and the rune Bezel had put into his thermos. Eerily close to what had been placed into the Sending Stones. 

“How?” The Knight asked, reaching a gloved finger over to gently nudge the small magical capacitor that had been designed to draw power from the leylines directly without a magic user. “How did they get this?”

“I don’t know.” Bezel said, and knelt down to the burned ground. She picked up the empty canister and shoved the assembly back inside of it. “I don’t know how  _ my work _ ended up in  _ this weapon. _ And I don’t know  _ who _ did this, but I’m going to find out.” She vowed angrily.

“And what will you do, once you’ve found them?” He asked.

“Stop them.” She vowed, and stormed past him.

The Knight almost asked her just how far she was willing to go to see that goal carried out, but shut his mouth before he could let out more than a syllable that was easily disguised as a grunt.

 

***

 

_ Atlantis _

_ Mage Knight Headquarters _

_ Furkansia District _

_ 1 Day Later _

  
  


Her brother Jorran Lantea looked distinctly unamused sitting behind his desk when Bezel slammed the ruined canister - the ruined  _ bomb _ \- down on top of it. The elderly Knight General standing behind him, a man the Knight recognized as being named Suddert, shuffled nervously at the obvious standoff between the two royals. The old man risked a glance at the Knight, and the Knight found himself raising his shoulders ever so slightly in the barest shrug he could manage surreptitiously. 

“What’s this supposed to be, sister mine?” Jorran asked lazily. 

“A weapon.” She snapped at him. “The remains of a weapon that we found in a burned out village in Aroca, littered in graves.”

Jorran rolled his eyes. “Your fascination with the Below constantly surprises me. What were you doing down there, anyways? Slumming it with your pet?” The royal glanced up at the Knight with a raised eyebrow, and the Knight went still to keep from snarling at him. Jorran was royalty. There were some insults, by the distance of their caste, that would have to go unanswered.

By him, anyways. Bezel had no such qualms, and reached across the desk to slap Jorran full across the face. The prince’s head recoiled from the strike, and then he hovered with wide eyes for a few seconds, stunned that it had happened. Then he jerked his face back around and glared at Bezel with full force.

“You can stop  _ insulting me _ and grow up anytime now, brother.” Bezel huffed at him. “And you will  _ definitely _ stop insulting My Knight. He is beyond your censure.”

 

Jorran breathed in and out several times, very close to doing something violent if the Knight had to guess. General Suddert coughed once and reached over to pick up the object Bezel had placed on the desk, and when he did so, soot stains were left behind. “Why do you bring this - this  _ weapon _ to us, your highness?” He asked her.

“My Knight has informed me that at first glance, it’s remarkably similar in manufacture to the explosive shells sometimes used by the Rapid Response Divisions within the Mage Knights.” Bezel kept on, polite but short and to the point. “Except there aren’t explosives in it.” Her magic glowed around the canister, and the interior components were yanked out, making Suddert yelp and drop the now empty container. “It’s been rigged with a mana reservoir, an emitter, and a component that  _ should not exist.” _

“So you say. And why should this not exist?” Jorran asked.

Bezel breathed in hard through her nose, and exhaled it all in a huff as she floated the central housing and its three components over into her hands. “Because it is  _ my work. _ Because I never put it into a weapon. Because the  _ only thing _ that I ever used this work in were the Sending Stones.”

The General sized up the canister’s outer housing. “There are no identification marks on this.” He said. “All shells manufactured carry marks of their origin and their production run. I will admit that this is...similar to the weapons used by the RRD, but it could not have been ours.”

“So you say.” Bezel snapped. “But who else save the military would have access to this kind of manufacturing process? Who else but the knights would have these components?  _ Who would have the kind of access to duplicate my work and  _ **_turn it into a weapon?!”_ ** She snapped, and her magic flared out as she lost control of her outrage. Her pink mana bled freely, a wave of pressure that made Jorran sink into his chair, the general put a hand to his chest as he gasped. The Knight raised an arm in front of his face and struggled to breathe.

The flare ended after three seconds, leaving Bezel looking pale and drawn. She took a stumbling step back away from the desk and the inner section of the device rolled out of her hands and landed on the desk, and the Knight stepped in behind her to hold her up.

“I’ll have our men look into this.” Jorran said to Bezel.

“Keep me informed.” Bezel said, breathing more regularly. The Knight let go of her shoulders once he felt her weight redistribute properly. 

“I’m afraid that would be quite impossible, your highness.” General Suddert cut in. “This has become a military matter. If you suspect that this is being done because of technology stolen from the Sending Stone project, then it is something we will have to investigate internally.”

“Will you?” Bezel spat at him. Suddert blinked.

“Pardon?”

“Will you investigate it?” Bezel demanded, reaching for the internal housing. “Or will you just ignore this because there’s truth to the claims that something is  _ rotten _ inside of Atlantis?”

Jorran folded his hands together and set his chin on them. “Tread carefully, little sister. I won’t stand for unfounded accusations.”

“This isn’t some little experiment, Jorran.” Bezel seethed. “This isn’t about someone stealing a  _ toy _ or hurting your feelings. People are dead! People were  _ killed _ with these bombs!”

“Please, your highness.” General Suddert begged her. “There’s no cause for these histrionics. Rest assured, I  _ will _ investigate this matter. I am certain that the Mage Knights are not responsible for these... _ things, _ but clearly someone has made this. I won’t stand for this kind of technology to fall into the wrong hands.” The old man picked up the pieces of the canister. “Leave this with me. You do not look well, you’re clearly exhausted. Even as young and vibrant as you are, you push yourself too hard.”

Bezel deflated. “Very well.” She twitched as if to turn, but then gestured with a hand to the inner housing, and the third component modeled after the runic capacitors of the Sending Stones was torn out of it and flew to her hand. “You look into that. I have my own research to do.”

“Your highness, I…”

“No, leave it, General Suddert.” Jorran snorted, turning patronizing. “My sister likes to dabble. Inventor, diplomat, voice of the people,, and now investigator. Let her have her amusements while she can. Once she is properly married off, her duties as a wife and mother will leave her little time for them.”

Bezel huffed and finally walked out of the office, and the Knight followed. She walked at a brisk pace until they were out of the building and outside on the streets of the Furkansia District, then sank onto the first available bench, looking even more worn out than before.

“Are you all right, Bezel?” The Knight asked her, kneeling at her side.

“No.” She admitted, her hair hanging around her like a curtain as her head drooped. “I’m  _ tired. _ I’m tired and I’m heartstick, and I don’t know why this is happening.”

“Let’s get you home.” The Knight said quietly. “You’ll feel better once you’ve rested properly.”

“I don’t want to go back to the palace.” She argued.

“I didn’t say the palace, Bezel.” The Knight told her. “I said I’d get you  _ home.” _ Home, for them, was the little shack in the Slums that had been his mother’s when he had been a boy, and was his now.

Theirs.

Bezel mustered a small smile. “Home sounds good.” She sighed, and held a hand out to him as he stood up. The Knight tugged gently, and raised her back on her feet.

 

***

 

_ Dusia Province _

_ The Village of Khapesh _

 

The investigation put on the Mage Knights went on for about two weeks before it was closed and a report was put out. Bezel insisted on receiving a copy and was so angry after reading it that it almost burned in her hands. The edges of the parchment were blackened when the Knight talked her down and pried it away from her. He understood her rage after reading it himself.

_ Inconclusive, _ it declared, going on to clear the Mage Knights of any wrongdoing and suggesting that the item and the massacre it had been found at must have been the work of rebellious elements hostile to Atlantis. After all, not every military unit had received their promised Sending Stone, and some of the shipments had turned up missing in an audit.

It even suggested that the Logosian Adherents might be responsible. After all, paraphernalia linking the bombed out village to the movement had been found, and the investigators found that suspicious. Bezel dismissed that possibility outright and the Knight dreaded her response. He turned out to have good reason to. They left Atlantis again and traveled to Asa so she could clear her head and meet with some of the gurus who were said to live in the wilderness. They made love in the wilderness, she sought out the practitioners of the Old Ways, and he protected her. 

They stopped in Khapesh in the morning to resupply, and Bezel stayed when she heard that a member of the Logosian Adherents was coming later that day. There were some in the village who looked at them nervously before Bezel worked that confession out of the village elder, but the Knight eventually placed that their fears weren’t directed at his red-haired wife. For the Princess of Atlantis, there was only respect.

It was the Knight they feared. He put it out of his mind and instead focused on the Adherent who came walking into Khapesh two hours later. The man smiled and greeted the villagers as he went, while two more Adherents who likely served as his cohort came behind and offered apples from further east to the children who scrambled to the visitors with open hands and demanding mouths. The Adherent, a man in his thirties with straight blond hair trimmed close to the scalp, greeted the village elder with a bow followed by clasped hands. When Bezel appeared, he stiffened at seeing someone so out of place, and his blue eyes watched her appraisingly as she introduced herself. He offered a slight bow of his head in return and returned the favor.

His name was Deakin Validus, and he had come to talk to the villagers. Bezel asked if she could stay and listen as well, a request that both surprised and pleased the Adherent even as his two associates, each of whom wore the emblem of their movement on their sleeves, looked less assured. Still, as they had come at lunchtime, Validus and his two associates joined the village for their midday repast, and Bezel and the Knight stayed as well.

Over small loaves of bread dipped into bowls of goat’s meat and vegetables in a  _ very _ spicy sauce, Validus spoke and the villagers listened.

“Ours is  _ not _ a movement of rebellion.” Validus explained, having moved past his opening list of complaints both generalized and specific about Atlantis and its myriad missteps. “Atlantis has long been the protector of Terra. We know full well that there are good and decent warriors who still fight to protect us. But the Atlantis that exists today is changed. It has become bloated, and decadent. Atlantis and its Mage Knights were meant to be the servants of the world. Instead, we have a Mage King and a nobility who rule us, and force the world to be  _ their servants. _ The Mage Knights were once a shield against those who would harm us and harm our world. But why now are they a sword directed inward? Why is a military now used as a cudgel to stamp out disobedience and dissent? Why are they so numerous, unless their goal was to control Terra with fear and a crushing fist?”

The Knight glanced around the village pavilion with wary eyes, seeing how so many of the villagers listened with rapt attention. And Validus was only getting started.

“Even here, do you not feel the weight of the yoke they put on you? Just how much of your annual crops do they take for the honor of their ‘protection?’ Is it less than it was 40 years ago? Or is it more? How much does your provincial lord demand in taxes? Is it justified? Or have times become harder for you, and the burden feels over-large in comparison?”

Murmurs of agreement rose up, farmers looking to herdsmen and finding common ground in their hardships.

“You are not alone in your burdens. Many of my fellow Logosian Adherents who have traveled in the other provinces of Euros and Asa and Aroca have heard similar stories. There are too many in our world who suffer as terribly as you do, if not more. Just look to Zolim. What happened there was a tragedy, and in what the Mage Knights publicized, there was a grain of truth beneath the lies. Yes, a terrifying creature was summoned up. But why? Why should so many, in so grand a city, sacrifice themselves to such a horror? It was because they were so crushed under their burdens that they saw no way out. They prayed for salvation and gave themselves to the first thing that whispered a false promise of it. And after the dust had cleared and the beast was laid low and the survivors crawled from the ruins of Zolim? What was done then? Did the nobles who were stationed there offer relief or further deprivations? Did the Mage Knights hold out an open hand or move to strike with a closed fist?” He bent his head in sorrow, and many others of Khapesh did as well. So did Bezel, and the Knight followed a moment later.

“Even now, Zolim exists under harsh rule. The barest shred of disagreement or resistance is punished severely. They seek to prevent another incident, but they do so with cruel methods and crueler intentions. It only serves to continue the cycle.” Validus brushed his hands together to clear them of bread crumbs and then stood. “I and the others of our movement want to break that cycle.”

“You can’t fight Atlantis!” One farmer shouted out. 

“We don’t want to  _ fight them.” _ Validus called back, firm in his declaration. “What good would fighting do? We are not a power equal to theirs. We are just the backs that they stand on and heap their disservices onto. The contract between Atlantis and the people that it was supposed to protect is broken. We don’t want to fight Atlantis, we want to  _ change it. _ The compact between Atlantis and the people of Terra has to be re-negotiated. Brute force will not make them listen. It only makes them tighten the chain around our necks.”

“So.” Bezel spoke up finally, having listened and observed very carefully while she ate. “What is your solution, then? What are you asking of the people here in Khapesh?”

Validus smiled as the villagers glanced between the speaker and the Princess. “The Logosian Adherents want to speak for the people of Terra, but we know that we cannot do that if we don’t have your concerns and your voices with us. There will come a time when we will stand before Atlantis and list our grievances. There will be a day when we seek redress and a change in how Atlantis operates, and in how we co-exist. When that day comes, if we are few, then they will not listen. They will dismiss our concerns,  _ your  _ concerns as nothing but the demands of a small group of people that they have no obligation to listen to. So when that day comes, we want you to stand up with all the other people from all the other villages and towns and cities where we suffer because of the injustices and the imbalance that exists. We will stand together and they will see that the whole of Terra is acting in concert. And  _ that _ is what will make them listen.” Validus focused his gaze on Bezel. “Not violence, your highness. Non-violence. And knowing my answer, what is the response of the House of Lantea?”

The Knight breathed in slowly as he watched every eye in the pavilion turn to her if they weren’t already staring at the princess of the world who deigned to commiserate with the masses. Bezel nibbled at her lower lip.

“I don’t have any power, you know.” Bezel confessed to Validus, to all of them. “My oldest brother Desmond will inherit the throne. My brother Jorran has already received Ascalon and been awarded command of the Mage Knights. I’m just me, and I have tried for years to make Terra a better place. For myself. For My Knight. For the people who live and - and those not yet born.” Her voice hitched a little on the words, but she rallied with a shake of her head that made her bound length of red hair sway behind it. “But things do need to change. I have traveled over most of Terra. I speak many languages of its people, and I have seen that there is suffering even on Atlantis. If you speak truly of your methods, if you do not seek out war to make these changes, then I wish you luck in it. I am doing what I can, powerless as I am. If you push from your end, and I from mine, then maybe we can make Terra better than how we found it after all.”

Validus raised an eyebrow. “Princess. Forgive me for saying so, but, powerless is one thing you are  _ not. _ The story of the rescue you led in Dapana and your role in the rescue of so many captured citizens in Ganarus Province may not be celebrated above Atlantis, but here on Terra, we remember them. You are  _ adored _ for it. You have done more for the people than your father and your brothers ever have. Were things different, we would gladly see you as Queen.”

Bezel bit her lip even harder and shut her eyes, and the Knight reached out to set a hand on her elbow.

“I don’t want to  _ rule. _ I have no taste for rulership. I just want to be happy. I want others to be happy, to live free and to love.”

The villagers shifted, seeing a side of the princess that none of them had ever expected to see. Reluctance and restraint. The Knight tracked the look in their eyes. They loved her all the more for her weaknesses. They looked to Validus, to the Logosian Adherent and his two associates with something very near to it. Not adoration, but respect.

Bezel had won the hearts of the people of Terra, and the Adherents made for the lesser prize of their minds as they spoke of revolution and change with flowery words and good intentions.

The Knight simmered. He knew just how quickly good intentions could be soured. The people of Zolim had prayed for salvation and unleashed a monster he’d barely survived, whose words still haunted him. The people of Banali City had slaughtered so many of the powerful in their desperation, and his mother had died at their hands.

**_Don’t get angry over the things you can’t change, my precious one._ ** Her words were fainter these days, but he remembered that line because of its association with his Bezel. His wife, who when she had been thirteen had countered with,  _ “And what about the things I  _ **_can_ ** _ change?!” _

He wondered if the change that the Adherents hoped for would be positive in its outcomes. He feared the opposite would come to pass.

 

***

 

They left Khapesh behind and camped in the wilderness. One last evening in each other’s company before they would return to Atlantis. The Knight reached to her and stroked her back in the way that had become an unwritten tell between them, him evincing a desire to make love. She didn’t accept and turn into his arms, though she did let him snuggle up behind her.

“I’m sorry. Is it your time?” He asked her.

“No.” She said faintly. “It isn’t. I just don’t feel up to it tonight.”

He thought it over. “Are you angry at me?”

“No.”

“Are you certain? It feels like you are.”

“Oh, for mana’s sake. Not everything is about  _ you, _ my Knight.” She huffed. He fell silent and relaxed his hold, and after a few seconds, she calmed down again, a thin figure in the darkness of an open sky above with only faint traces of cloud cover. “I’m worried.”

“About these Adherents? So am I.”

“No, not  _ about _ them.” Bezel corrected him with a sigh. “I am worried  _ for _ them. The investigation into the making of that bomb we found in Aroca was useless. I am convinced that there is more going on than we know. And I am worried that whatever happened in that village in Aroca will happen elsewhere.”

“You think the Adherents are being targeted?”

“I think it makes more sense that somebody wishes them gone and wants it done quietly than for the Adherents, a  _ non-violent _ political movement, to bomb the very people they both want to help and need help from.” She murmured. “And I am almost positive that there is someone working with the shadow group that bombed the village in Aroca within the palace. Someone is stealing the work I made for peaceful ends and turning it towards destruction.”

“Can you prove it? Can you find them where the Mage Knights didn’t?”

“I don’t know. I hope I can. That’s another reason why we left Atlantis, I’m giving them time to hang themselves.”

“You’ve been so tired lately. Why do you push yourself this hard, Bezel? Why do you heap the problems of the world on your shoulders?” The Knight asked with a rumble as he sent his hand from stroking the side of her arm to palming her stomach. He loved holding her like that. But she’d never gone so still under his touch before, or held her breath. The Knight stilled and then moved his hand to her hip, and she relaxed and started breathing again. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked that.”

“It’s not…” She started, and bit the rest of the sentence off. There was a shiver that passed through her, and she rolled over, burying her face into his sleeping tunic and his chest. “I’m so scared.”

“Why?” He asked. Bezel shook her head, wrapping her arms around him and pulling herself in tighter. “Bezel, why?”

“Just remember something for me.” She asked him.

“Anything.” He promised.

“Remember that you are My Knight. My  _ husband. _ And that I trust you with my heart.” She got out hoarsely, close to tears.

He held her tighter as she wept against him. “Always, Bezel.” The Knight vowed. “Always.”

It was some time before sleep found them, but they never let go of each other, not even when it did.

 

*B*

 

_ The Royal Palace, Atlantis _

_ 7 Months After Bezel’s 16th Birthday _

_ Midnight _

  
  


_ I am giving them time to hang themselves, _ Bezel had confessed to her Knight on the last night before they returned to Atlantis. It wasn’t the only thing she had wanted to say to him, there were other things she’d been screaming inside her mind to tell him if she hadn’t been so afraid. Afraid of what he might say. Afraid of how he would react. She thought she had known him so well, after all. Magrud had revealed otherwise, and shown her a darkness to her husband that made her hesitate.

No. This, she could not take to him. This, she would do on her own. 

The Knight had left the palace. He would be back at home now, fast asleep in their bed, and he wouldn’t be expecting her tonight. The illusion of herself sleeping remained in force, however. She needed the quiet that came with a sleepy night and the few still awake lulled into complacency. 

Using the talents in stealth and hiding that she had learned over three years in his company and under his protection, Bezel Lantea made her way to the lower levels of the castle where the royal alchemist laboratories were located. The main areas were locked to her now, a change made after the leyline mapping project had been called a ‘failure’ and the Sending Stone project had been militarized. But her own personal workshop, converted out of a storage closet never used by the other alchemists, was still available to her. She paused at the doorway and accessed the small and hidden rune within the doorframe, tied to the locked knob. Bezel had warded it before she and her Knight had left for the Below again, a small and subtle thing she had developed during her studies of the Old Ways. It wasn’t meant to make the door impassable or to bar anyone from entering. There was no painful security system that would lance a trespasser with the power of a raging thunderstorm or the burning agony of a fire blast. Instead, if someone entered without disabling it, which would be difficult given that the small runic lock betrayed no hint of its presence with magesight, it would register the intrusion and ‘tag’ them, creating a subtle shade to their magic that would point her in the direction they traveled for a short distance, so long as the trail was fresh. 

She exhaled as she felt for the ward and her heart fell. It had been triggered after all. Speaking the proper command word that both unlocked the door and cancelled the ward, Bezel slipped inside and closed the door again. 

Someone had come in while she had been gone. Now it was just a matter of deducing what they had taken. She had her suspicions, of course, and they proved to be merited. The capacitor from the bomb she had taken, she had left on top of her desk, but buried underneath enough loose piles of artificing debris and pages of notes so that it appeared forgotten in the clutter to a thief, and thus would not be immediately missed or even dismissed as lost after. It was the only thing missing from her drawers and shelves of particular sensitivity. The most important documents and designs she had kept close at hand ever since she had forged her Heartstone. The Knight had called it paranoia at the time, but her fears were clearly well-founded. The small locator spell that she had placed on the damaged mana capacitor was still intact as well, a precaution in case anyone had found the ward hidden on her door and disabled it.

Bezel clenched a hand into a fist and walked out, following the two traces. It led her to the royal alchemist laboratories, and it was the work of a moment to scan for the wards and disable them with brute strength, burning the runes out with her power before they could ever trigger. Slipping inside with her gray hooded cloak around her frame, she put one hand up around her Heartstone and squeezed it for support before following the trail further in.

Of course a royal alchemist would be in on the scheme.  _ Of course. _ How often had they dismissed her ideas and sneered at her from behind thinly veiled insults? Her Knight had mentioned how enthralled a few of them had been when they’d caught sight of the thermos she had made for him as an experiment early in the development of what would become her Heartstone. Of course they wouldn’t want her getting close to the answers. Surely there would be an outcry even among the Mage Knights. There were certainly others like Sloane. Not everyone could be monsters.

The trail gave out within the expansive laboratories themselves, but the locator spell kept pulsing weakly, responding to the trace she had set on it. It brought her to a wall, and she spent a minute staring at it before she realized why she was getting a signal from behind it.

Cracking open a hidden doorway was easy with a managrasp spell when you knew where to find it. It was just directing ones’ grip to the hidden catch and setting it in motion. A tunnel was revealed, and pulling her gray cloak tighter around herself, Bezel wandered into it, already worried why the royal alchemists would have such secrecy for their work inside the heavily patrolled and warded royal palace.

The answer broke her heart when the winding tunnel brought itself into an even larger space beneath the palace, a hollowed out cavern with tracks and carts leading out of it. It was a hollow space with an entirely different operation than what one would expect to find.

Beneath the castle, with either the full approval of the royal family or eyes turned the other way, the alchemists and agents of the Mage Knights were producing even more bombs. There were racks of them lined up along the walls, each of them capable of drawing a charge from the living world through the capacitors Bezel had designed. There seemed to be only a small crew on duty, just a few knights and alchemists patrolling the space or taking inventory.

Bezel slipped into a shadow and sank to the ground. She pressed her hands to her mouth and wept, letting the tears come. It was a betrayal beyond anything she had ever expected to find. Here, here was where her stolen work had been usurped. For years they had told her that she was nothing but a silly little girl with a head full of wild ideas that amounted to nothing. For years, she had been belittled and dismissed and talked over. They told her that there was nothing of value in the leyline mapping project, that her works of artifice were mere toys.

Lies. All of it, lies. The image of the hidden factory, the rows and rows of bombs were burned into her mind. They didn’t want her. They had never wanted her.

But they would steal her work to make weapons to oppress the people of Terra.

Bezel broke apart, and in her grief, she saw only one solution. 

 

*K*

  
  


The alarms on Atlantis wailed in a way that they hadn’t in the Knight’s entire lifetime. It thundered through every district loud enough to wake the dead, and when he jerked himself out of bed and looked to the skyline, there was no mistaking the reason why.

The palace was burning, and under the glow of towering magelight beacons and the dull glow of low fires, smoke was billowing out of the lower halls. He yelped in panic and raced for his clothes and his sword. The armor, he ignored. It wouldn’t do any good in fighting a blaze, and he gave less than a damn about that. The only thing that mattered to him, the only person, was Bezel. His darling was in that palace, and trapped. He burst out of his home and let his magic burn, propelling him on a blue wave towards the devastation that kicked up dust and debris in his wake.

It was chaos on a level that the Knight hadn’t seen since Dapana’s earth-shake. There was no enemy to be slain, no force to draw a blade on. Just a fire raging out of control and people either running into the blaze dragging buckets of water or floating small rivers of it behind them through the air. The royal knights did their best to try and coordinate it all, and dozens of servants shivered, huddling together in the cool night air as they stared in horror at the ruin of what had been their home and their hearth and their charge.

“It’s Bezel’s Knight!” One servant shouted, catching sight of him and gesturing wildly. Some of the other knights looked over and stopped their conversations, catching sight of him, and the Knight put them out of his mind. He looked around for the royal family, and saw only the Mage King and his sons. Of Bezel, there was no sign.

The Knight stormed towards the front entrance, where black smoke still billowed out in abundance. A hand fell on his arm, and he whirled to see one of the palace guards looking at him in horror. “You can’t go in there! It’s not safe!”

“Watch me!” The Knight yelled, throwing his arm off and taking off in another burst of magic. It formed a shield around him and ahead of him, throwing the blinding smoke to either side of him. He knew the corridors well enough to power through them, even with the heat and the choking fumes throwing off his senses and the smoke blinding him. He knew the path to Bezel’s chambers better than he knew his own home. The door was closed, and he drew out his sword and slashed through it, on the off chance that she had tried for it and succumbed and was lying on the other side unconscious. On the floor dedicated to her chambers, the heat of the blaze was nonexistent, but the smoke lingered on, thinner yet still dangerous to breathe in. He didn’t find her on the floor, and coughing, he made his way to her windows and flung them open.

The Knight stuck his head out long enough to choke out the soot and to gulp in fresh, cool air before he whirled a hand around and conjured a wind to suck out the worst of the smoke in the chamber so he could search for her. “Bezel!” He cried out, coughing twice more. “Bezel!”

She wasn’t in her chambers. The illusion she used to fool the servants who came to check in on her wasn’t activated. Her bed was made, and her room wasn’t torn apart. Nothing was out of place at all.

But it was what was  _ on _ her bed that caught his attention. She had left her crown, her circlet and its precious gemstones lying on her pillow for him to find. And beneath it, there was a note addressed to him.

_ For My Knight- _

_ Do you trust me? Then come home. _

 

He stared at the words as his eyes watered from the sting of the rising smoke, and clenched the note in his hand. He burned it in his hand and screamed in his mind. Somehow, this was all Bezel’s doing. He didn’t know why or how, but he knew it was her. She’d set the palace ablaze. And he needed answers. Gripping the circlet, he called on his power and raced out of the castle.

The royal knights and the Mage King met him outside as his energy flagged off again and he collapsed to the ground, choking on the fumes that had grown stronger as he’d descended and his strength had started to give out on him.

“Where is she?!” The Mage King demanded. “Where is my daughter Bezel, knight? Tell me!”

“She isn’t...she’s not inside, sire.” The Knight rasped, holding up her circlet for the king’s inspection. Volkas Lantea snatched it from him and stared at it with growing horror. “She’s not here.”

“She was taken?” The Mage King whispered. “No. No, not my Bezel. This arson, this act of treason...was it merely misdirection?” He pulled the Knight up to his feet, the older man’s eyes wild with pain and panic. “Please, you must find her! Find her and save her from the people who captured her! Bring her back to me!”

“Sire, I…”

Bezel’s father grabbed his shoulders, his fingers digging in tightly. He leaned in and whispered, or perhaps hissed very softly, into his ear. “I know you love her. I know you would never let anything happen to her. I just want her back. Please. I’ve failed her all of her life. Don’t let her be taken before I can make amends!”

He released the Knight and leaned back, and the Knight stumbled two steps away before he recovered and quickly nodded his head. “I will try, your Majesty.” He said, and went running away from the still burning castle. By the looks of the others who weren’t involved in the ongoing rescue operation to save the palace, they thought his quest one driven by madness and desperation, doomed to failure.

The Knight knew exactly where to find her, though. She’d left him a note.

 

***

 

_ The Knight’s Home _

_ Outer District _

  
  


He didn’t know what to expect when he walked through his door. His heart was still trapped in a middling state between outright panic and a slowly rising fury. Would she be sitting on the edge of their bed and crying? Would she be pacing, working herself into a froth?

He was stunned to find her sitting at the kitchen table and quietly drinking warm white tea from a mug. She was wearing her gray cloak and had her satchel lying out in front of her. Her hands were trembling, and her eyes had a fierceness to them that didn’t match up with the utter ruin and pale complexion on her face. She looked up as he walked in, blinked twice, and whispered his name before standing up and racing into his arms.

She’d been holding herself together, but once she was safe in his arms she fell apart. 

“Bezel.” He held her to his chest and breathed in the smell of her hair, all the familiar scents tangled up in the scent of acrid smoke. “What happened? Why is the palace on fire?”

“They were making the bombs there.” Bezel told him, gripping the back of his shirt. “They broke into my workshop. They  _ stole _ my research. I warded it, followed the trail. Beneath the royal alchemist’s laboratories. An entire  _ cavern _ full of those bombs.”

He froze. “What did you do, Bezel?”

She breathed out and pulled away from him, and he looked into her green eyes. The ferocity he’d seen now carried resolve.

“I  _ burned it all down.” _ She told him solemnly. Bezel swallowed and reached for her bag. “I don’t know how high it goes. The investigation got buried. They were doing it  _ right under my nose, _ telling me my ideas were useless and then they turned around and made  _ weapons _ with them. It doesn’t matter what I do or how loud I scream at them. Nobody  _ listens!” _

The Knight swallowed. “I listened.”

She slumped while she secured her satchel’s strap, tightening it to her side. “I know. We have to go. We have to go now. Atlantis can’t...it’s not...I can’t  _ fix it. _ My father, my brothers, everyone else who has  _ power, _ none of them are going to change. I can’t stay here. They’re just going to keep using me. Using my ideas to hurt people.”

“Like you hurt people?” He demanded, a sour taste building in the back of his throat. “The whole  _ castle _ is up in fire and smoke!” He stared at her, looking for sorrow. There was grief there, but he didn’t see true remorse. She’d have done it all over again.

“Given how much power their bombs had siphoned off the leylines flowing through Atlantis, I can’t say that I’m surprised.” Bezel murmured. “I gave them a chance to run before I set the first one off. I pulled the alarm and made them scatter before I went back to my lab and burned everything I’d left behind.”

“So that’s it then. You’re just going to run away from everything. Where would you even go?”

“We’ve traveled most of the world. We have friends. People who can hide us. Places Atlantis won’t look.” Bezel said, her eyes dancing wildly as she went to the cupboards and started shoving the nonperishables into her bag. “Validus was right. Things have to change.”

“The  _ Adherents? _ The people living Below who hate Atlantis enough to risk sedition and treason?  _ That’s _ who you’re going to run to?!” The Knight snapped. “You’d run headlong into their tender mercies?”

“What choice do we have?” She yelled back at him, as pale as he’d ever seen her. “I  _ tried, _ my Knight. I tried to be the princess everyone expected and it nearly broke me until you came into my life. I tried to be the princess everyone  _ needed _ and I was ignored and condescended to and marginalized! What were my choices if I had stayed? What kind of a life could we have had if we stayed here on Atlantis? An easy life, built on the suffering of the people you taught me to love and to care for? A life where we surrendered what we loved because of obligation? Like my mother surrendered? Like Sloane did? No. No, I refuse. I  _ refuse _ to be used like that. I didn’t take up Artificing to kill innocents, and you didn’t become a Knight to slaughter innocents either.”

“Bezel.” The Knight said, looking at her and feeling faint. “Bezel, you’re the princess. There is  _ nowhere _ you could go that they won’t find you.”

She laughed at that, a bitter laugh full of scorn, and carved a hand through the air that left a glowing pink trail in its wake. “They’ll try. We’ve gotten good at disappearing, though.”

The Knight stared at her, and wondered how he’d missed just how broken she was. How did the girl he’d known and loved almost all of his life turn into the woman standing in front of him? A woman who burned down the royal palace instead of lodging a formal protest, who put her faith into lawless brigands and mourned for criminals?

“No.” He whispered, and hated how it made his stomach turn. He hated how she’d forced him to it.

She laughed, finishing the wide circle in the air and then pushed against it with her palm, sending it to drift to the wall. It sank into the wood and glowed, a circle that burned with her power and just sat there. “No? Have you forgotten the days and nights we spent lost in the Grand Savannah? Or traveling through the wilds of Asa? I don’t think anyone else in the Mage Knights is as experienced as you are with living rough…”

“I’m not coming with you.” He cut her off, and the words fell from his lips like lead weights. She froze. “I can’t, Bezel.”

Bezel swayed gently on her feet in their kitchen, and when she turned, he almost broke.

“You don’t mean that.” She stammered out. “You can’t.”

“This is wrong, Bezel. We can’t run away from this.”

“We  _ have _ to!” She pleaded with him, reaching out and grabbing his arm. “We can’t stay! We absolutely  _ can’t. _ The only way we can keep this life and be together is if we run, and run now!”

“The girl I fell in love with never ran from anything.” He shot back.

“I’m not running from you.” She said, and her lower lip trembled. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“I’m telling you that if you run, I’m not coming with you.” He repeated dully. “I can’t stop you, but…I can’t do what you’re asking me to do.”

There was no hiding her tears at that. “You are My Knight.” She pleaded with him. “Your place is at my side.”

“Not when you burn the palace down and go running to hide with criminals and traitors.”

She shook her head, and for a moment he thought she might try to argue that point. She must have decided it was something that neither of them could agree on, because it wasn’t what she said next. “You promised me. You  _ promised. _ Your life was mine. I asked you not to die for me. I asked you to live with me.”

“What kind of a life could we have if we ran? Hunted down and pursued for the rest of our lives until they got tired of trying to take us alive and decided to kill us?”

“I trusted you. I gave you  _ my heart.”  _ She gasped, and reached for the Heartstone that hung from her choker. 

“And now you’re destroying mine.” He held out a hand to her. “Please, Bezel. Don’t do this.”

She batted his hand away and closed in on him, reaching for his collar and yanking out the amulet he kept under his shirt by its chain. She snapped it open.

**_“You’re so brave. Don’t ever stop being brave.”_ ** The voice of his mother said to him, along with the image of her that Bezel had ensorceled into the minor artifact.  

Damn her. It was a low blow.

“What would your mother say about you?” She asked him hoarsely.

The Knight shut his eyes for a few seconds, then looked back up and stared at her face. “I wouldn’t know. She’s dead. Killed by the people you think will help you now.”

 

The desperation she felt tore at him, and she fell back away from him on shaky legs. Her face was so pale that it blended into the gray of her hooded cloak, and only her pained green eyes and her red hair carried any color. She wrapped an arm around her stomach, looking nauseous as she stared back at him.

“Don’t do this.” Bezel begged him. “Please. Don’t make me do this alone.”

“If you leave me now, Bezel, you will be.” He warned her.

 

She stumbled back to the wall, and her emotions closed off from him. Her face was a blank mask, save for the tears that didn’t stop. She turned away from him and looked to the glowing circle of magic impressed on the wooden wall of their home. A finger glowing with her power traced runes around its edge.

“How are you even going to get off of Atlantis, anyways?” The Knight asked her. “The alarm’s been raised. Everyone’s looking for you. The skyskiff docks are closed, you’ll never get a ship. Or were you planning on fighting your way out? Arson wasn’t enough for you?”

Bezel was quiet as she kept tracing her runes around the circle of pink mana, unnerving him further. “No. Fighting is  _ your _ answer to everything. Not mine.”

“What are you doing there anyways?” He demanded, and started to walk towards her. Bezel flung up her other hand and her aura flared to life around her. A shield slammed down in front of him, burning an angry pink that blocked him completely. He snarled and pulled out his sword, slashing at it, but the barrier refused to give way even when he fed his magic into his strikes.

Unhindered, Bezel finished her runework and pressed a hand to the glowing circle. It shimmered and the runes around it burned brightly before disappearing, and the wall shimmered like a pond’s surface before revealing a familiar landscape. The Grand Savannah in Aroca.

“Bezel!” The Knight yelled at her, looking between his wife and an image of a place that shouldn’t be. “Bezel!”

She turned and looked at him one last time, wiping the tears out of her eyes. “Goodbye.” Bezel said, and pulled the hood of her cloak up. With her satchel in hand, she turned around and  _ stepped into _ the image of the Grand Savannah. A moment later, as he watched in disbelief while she walked into the countryside a continent away, the image rippled and faded away. It left a blank wall in its place. The shield gave out at last from her absence, and he raced to where she’d been. 

Where she’d disappeared. His hands traced the barren wall of his home, and no matter how often he screamed her name, all that was left was the lingering scent of her hair, and the echo of the last thing she’d said to him.

_ Goodbye. _

 

***

 

The days drifted by in a haze after the night that the royal palace burned and Princess Bezel Lantea disappeared. When she was  _ taken, _ as the official reports stated. The Knight had returned back to the Mage King in a daze, telling her father very honestly that she was gone and he had no idea how it had happened.

The whole of the Mage Knights were activated by Volkas Lantea, and tasked with searching for the lost princess and rescuing her ‘from her kidnappers.’ The Knight led several expeditions to do so, desperately retracing all of the journeys that he and Bezel had made in happier times. He scoured Aroca from top to bottom. He interrogated the gurus in Asa. He spoke at length with Danel and Yagi Rusla and left agents to watch their estate. Through it all, the Mage King grew ever more despondent, the reward for her safe return kept rising, and the search for Bezel resulted in raids that sometimes turned brutal. The Knight, who had hidden the truth of her escape from everyone, felt himself growing numb as he failed, day after day, to find her.

After six months of fruitless searching, the demands of an exhausted nobility and the Mage Knights finally became too great to ignore. The Mage King called off the search, and in a state funeral that spared no expense, Atlantis mourned the loss of its princess. A line that went on endlessly passed by her empty casket, and by the time the procession had all walked by, it was covered in mana lillies, her favorite flower.

Atlantis moved on. Terra moved on. Things, terrible as they were, resumed to a level of normalcy that was tolerated, and the Logosian Adherents stubbornly held on to life.

The day after her funeral, the Knight took a few of the mana lillies and planted them outside of his house, next to the worn front door. Sentiment, some of the other knights mused. A token bid at remembrance from the young man who was forever marked with the label of “Bezel’s Knight” after her funeral, and who was scorned and pitied in equal measure. They grew, but did not thrive, and the Knight couldn’t help but see it as a sign that the best part of him was lost. They all had it wrong. He hadn’t planted them in her memory. He had planted them as a prayer that he suspected would never be answered; that she might come home to him. She wouldn’t. She had begged him to come with her, and at every step he had refused her. Out of anger, out of spite. Out of the poison he’d lived with after his mother’s death that he’d never quite gotten over. 

Bezel Lantea, his wife, was lost to him, and to Terra.

The world was so much grayer for it.

 

***

 

_ The Northern Steppe, Ganarus Province _

_ A Nomad Encampment _

_ 1 Month, 2 Weeks After Princess Bezel’s Funeral _

 

A 17 year old Bezel held her newborn daughter in her arms as the wind and the storm howled outside of the yurt. The storm tried to strike at the tent of hardened leather and wooden stakes, and the chill of it was held off by a slow burning fire at the center that kept the small space heated. The babe with wisps of dark hair let out a burbling wail, and Bezel's eyes misted up as she pulled the sleeve off of her dress so her daughter could nurse, and the infant went after her meal hungrily, soothed by the sound of her mother's heartbeat.

The yurt's flap opened suddenly, and she jerked her head towards it even as she turned her body and her child away from the danger. She relaxed when the wise woman in the camp of nomads came inside, carrying a thermos of something that smelled delicious. She shook the snow off of her shoulders and sighed as she tugged on the yurt’s handle. The tent flap closed, and the warmth of the fire slowly banished the cold from the air again.

"How is she?" ‘Ama Yagi’ Rusla asked with concern. 

"She is hungry." Bezel replied, and the woman hummed and set the thermos down on the small collapsible table beside Bezel’s mattress and the wicker cradle erected next to it. 

"A good sign." The steward of Ganarus Province said. "And how are you?" 

"I live." 

"You are breathing, princess. You do not live." The older woman argued curtly. 

Bezel shut her eyes. "I'm not a princess anymore." 

"To us, you are." The wise woman said sorrowfully. "You always will be." There was silence between them, broken only by the sound of Bezel’s daughter's hungry suckling at her breast, before the wise woman pressed on. "Who is her father?" 

Bezel sucked in a shaky breath full of pain, and a tear fell from her squinted eye. "She has no father."

 

**_The Knight Will Return_ **


	9. She Begged For Peace

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ten years after the Knight lost Bezel Lantea, the world of Terra has been changed and remade. Summoned to join a mission to the newly established independent nation of Logos, the Knight will come face to face with his past in a way that will make him question everything he believes in...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Recommended Music for this chapter is as follows:  
> -"Stranger In Moscow" by Michael Jackson  
> -"Here You Come Again" by Dolly Parton  
> -"Ahsokan Farewell" from Ken Burns' Civil War documentary

**_Little Moment: The Sorceress And The Knight_ **

By Eric ‘Erico’ Lawson

* * *

**Eight: She Begged For Peace**

  
  


_ Ten Years Later _

_ Portstand 242nd RRD Encampment _

_ Dalum Province, Aroca _

  
  


The Knight woke before dawn, his eyes snapping open as he grasped at the faint tendrils of a rapidly fading dream. He blinked several times, yawning deeply as he tried to remember it. He’d dreamed of  _ her _ again, he knew it, but he couldn’t remember why. Or what she had been doing. It was always how it went when he dreamed of his wife, lost to him for 10 years now. She always escaped him and left him hollow and grieving.

A pang of longing passed through him, and he violently crushed it and threw the thin blanket off of his cot. He walked to the window of his quarters, stretching as he went, and stared out of the window to a sky that was still a dark blue with thin strands of a lighter color shining through the clouds. The Knight dragged a hand through his trimmed black hair and looked at the faint reflection of his face in the glass. Dull blue and gray eyes that matched the color of a storm stared back at him, and dark stubble graced his chin from two days’ growth. He was a physically impressive specimen for a 28 year old Mage Knight, but he never paid any mind to the niceties thrown at him. He looked at himself and only saw the drawn face and the fatigue he kept hidden from the rest of Terra and Atlantis. He kept it hidden because he had to.

The Knight was a lieutenant now, one of Knight Commander Sloane’s most trusted officers. Lieutenants never showed weakness in front of their men. He remembered the hard-nosed approach taken by Freska Baynes during his early training, and how she’d fallen apart during the Code Violet in Zolim before she was killed.

People said a great many things about him. The Knight didn’t care. Only one person’s opinion had ever mattered to him, and she was gone now.

Scowling, he pushed himself away from his reflection and went for his closet. Another day in the service.

Without her.

 

***

 

“Commander, you have to be joking.” The Knight said, his voice more controlled than he felt. Knight Commander Alastair Sloane, the closest thing to a father that he’d ever had, leaned back in his seat as the Knight stared at the transfer orders he’d slid across the desk.

“In this, lieutenant, I am not. Much as I wish I were. Too many provinces have declared themselves a part of this new body politic. The Mage King is planning on sending an emissary to these talks, and he was particularly insistent that you be among the guard contingent for the representative.”

Sloane was talking about  _ Logos, _ of course. After years of working in the shadows, building up support, and fomenting dissent against the heavy-handed policies of Atlantis, the Logosian Adherents had gone from a fringe group without a foothold to something more substantial. A year ago, eighteen provinces, centered mainly in Asa and Eastern Euros had announced that they had formed stronger ties independent of Atlantean oversight, and aside from RRD forces stationed for true emergencies, had told the regional knights to leave, taking the role of day to day policing on themselves. It had caused quite the stir at the time, but they had insisted that they were still loyal to Atlantis and they still made their production and tax quotas, so things had settled down for a time. Many in Atlantis had brayed for war, but the old king Volkas Lantea had refused. The creation of Logos had happened almost completely unopposed.

But Mage King Volkas Lantea had died three months ago, with his son Desmond assuming the throne. And last week, twelve more provinces, including four in Aroca, had announced that they were joining with Logos as well. And Logos had announced it was planning on ‘re-negotiating’ the contract between Terra and Atlantis. The RRD had been on high alert since then, and the Knight had taken to assigning additional training sessions to the men under his command.

Training sessions that someone else would apparently be overseeing from now on.

“Sir.” The Knight said stiffly. “If they want a glorified bodyguard, there are others willing to take on the task. That’s all that the royal knights are good for.”

“You were a royal knight once.” Alastair Sloane said, scratching at his head of hair that had more salt than pepper in it now. Stress and age had taken their toll, and he hadn’t been young when the Knight had first met him. “It falls within your skillset.”

The Knight bristled. “I served my time on Atlantis. I am  _ done _ playing bodyguard. I can be of more use here.”

Sloane sighed and stared at him, unimpressed. “Yes. I know. But it’s orders, son. We have to follow them, even if we don’t like them. Or you could resign.”

“And do what?” The Knight asked wearily. “Settle down? Retire? Take up  _ farming?” _

“Maybe.” Sloane shrugged. “Maybe you could even find a woman to make an honest man out of you.”

The Knight couldn’t help the laugh at that, but he limited it to one bitter bark before he got himself back under control. “No. I’m ruined for anyone else. Just like you were.”

Sloane’s gaze softened, and he looked away. “Yes. I guess so. So, what’ll it be? You going to take the temporary reassignment, or are you handing in your sword?”

The Knight fidgeted in place. “I haven’t been on Atlantis since then. I’ve avoided it. I’ve tried to avoid everywhere that reminds me of her.”

“You traveled everywhere with her, though.”

“I didn’t say I’d succeeded.” The Knight sighed. He broke parade rest without authorization and ran a hand through his hair. Sloane didn’t say anything about it. “I thought it would start hurting less after a while.”

“It doesn’t.”

“What?”

“Hurt any less.” Sloane told him. “But you learn to live with it so it doesn’t eat you alive. I thought you had done that already.”

The Knight reached down and picked up his transfer orders, staring at them again.

Temporary reassignment to the royal knights. A mission of great importance to the crown. Protection for a representative of Atlantis for negotiations with the ruling council of Logos. Due to report to Atlantis in two days before heading for the Logosian capital.

“So had I.” The Knight whispered.

 

***

 

_ The Outer District _

_ Atlantis _

_ 2 Days Later _

  
  


He was expected in the royal palace in a few hours, but the Knight had elected to take an earlier flight from Zolim to Atlantis after flying out from Portstand. It left him with time to wander, and most people took one look at him in his armor with its RRD pauldrons and his lieutenant’s mark and then gave him a wide berth. With his rank and his armor, he could have gone anywhere. 

Nobody expected to see a Mage Knight kitted for field operations wandering through the Slums, and he ignored the worried glances. He had a destination in mind and not much time at all to get there. Even after leaving Atlantis behind, he hadn’t forgotten the route or the streets. Little had changed in the Slums. Nobody in a position of power had seen much of a point in putting money into renovations for it.

It meant that everything looked almost the same as when he’d left ten years before. It meant that the house that had once been his mother’s, and then his, and then  _ theirs, _ was still standing. He pulled himself short twenty paces away from the front door and stared at it, finding it still in good shape. The mana lillies they’d planted were still there. 

Then he saw a woman around his age open the door and step outside, catching sight of him. His breath caught in his throat for a moment and his heart sped up until he saw that her hair was brown and not red, and short instead of long. A little boy was by her side, and she grabbed for his hand before he could go racing off. But just for a moment…

He closed his eyes, counted five seconds, and looked again. He didn’t see his Bezel there, thankfully. Just a woman holding her young son close by and calling out to another person walking in their direction, who…

The Knight blinked and stared, struck dumb as he realized he knew the woman who was strolling to the small house with a small basket covered by a dishtowel. She was older, but until he’d left Atlantis, he’d been friends with the Geenes for a long time. Willys picked him out easily and sized him up with a glance full of suspicious recognition, then she held up a hand to him, telling him to wait with a gesture. Then she pointed a finger at the ground and motioned forcefully. She wanted him to stay where he was also.

The Knight bristled, but waited and watched as Willys Geene went over to the mother and child and greeted them, giving the woman a one-armed hug and ruffling the boy’s hair before they stepped back inside of the house. Willys emerged a moment later alone with a now empty basket, looked right to where he was still standing, and gave a satisfied nod before walking over to him. He stood a little straighter as Willys stopped three paces away and looked him over.

“Is it really you, boy?” The woman asked softly. “It would have to be, though. The way you were looking at the house…”

He smiled through the pang of memory and longing that shot through his heart. “Hello, Mrs. Geene. It’s good to see you again.” 

Her face lit up. “It  _ is _ you.” She set the basket down and rushed him, hugging him tightly. “Where have you been?! After the princess went missing, you disappeared on us! You didn’t even send us a single word to let us know how you were doing!” She pulled away from him and smacked the side of his arm on his bracer, which didn’t hurt him at all and he suspected she did more for effect. “Why didn’t you ever come back?”

“I couldn’t.” He confessed, something in the matronly woman’s disposition and stance that made him unwilling to try and live with a lie. “I was never a good  _ royal _ knight. I only stayed for her. After she - after all that, staying up on Atlantis was too painful.” He looked over the woman’s head and felt another pang of memory shoot through him. “I kept expecting to see her.”

“Ah, lad.” Willys sighed sadly, and hugged him again, softer this time. “So. Where are you now?”

“Back with the Rapid Response Division.” He said. “I’m stationed in Aroca. But I’ve been reassigned for a time. I’m to report to the royal palace for my next duty.”

“And you decided to come for a walk to visit the old haunts?” Willys wagered cannily. “Even though you keep seeing her everywhere?”

He didn’t have a good answer for that, so he changed the subject. “So. Another family lives there now?”

“Aye. Mother and her son. The father died in an accident on the skyskiff docks. We’ve been able to support them, and you did say when you were younger that you wanted it to be used. While you were around, and Bezel was alive, we were happy to let you have it, but once you left...didn’t make much sense for an empty house to go unused if you weren’t coming back. You’re not offended, I hope?”

“No.” The Knight quickly dismissed her fears. “No, they’re welcome to it. It’s not my home anymore. And no, I don’t want to go inside. Too many memories.” 

She must have caught him looking sad, because Mrs. Geene put a hand up on the side of his face. “Ah, lad.” The woman breathed. The Knight looked at her, and shut his eyes when he saw the sympathy shining there. “She loved you. You loved her. There’s naught wrong with that.”

He swallowed. “She was a princess. I was just a knight. It...it would have never lasted.”

“It’s love, boy.” Willys told him gruffly. “Love’s never wrong. You two could’ve changed the world if she’d not been kidnapped and killed in that fire.”

His throat closed off on him, and the Knight settled for pulling her into a hug that he initiated for once. “You’re a good woman, Willys Geene. Thank you for looking after Atlantis in my absence.” The Knight forced out. 

“Aye. But don’t disappear on us again, lad.” She chided him. “Write to us every so often, won’t you?”

He hugged her again, but he promised nothing. Willys Geene thankfully didn’t call him on it. She must have felt how close to breaking he was.

 

***

 

_ The Royal Palace _

 

Standing in the throne room again was an experience that dredged up far too many memories, but the circumstances and the jarring differences were enough to keep the Knight from ruminating on them for very long. 

It wasn’t Volkas Lantea who sat on the throne now, after all. The old Mage King had been dead for a quarter of a year, and his son Desmond now sat on the throne, a proud and smug and far too conniving fellow in his early 30’s. Desmond looked down imperiously as the Knight knelt in formal salute with his right hand fisted and pressed over his chest. The Knight kept kneeling and kept waiting. And waiting.

After perhaps the most uncomfortable fifteen seconds of his life, Desmond must have finally felt satisfied. He made a small gesture with one hand and cleared his throat. “You may rise.”

The Knight did so, beginning to understand why Sloane was always complaining about the ache in his knees when he had to bend down for something. He hadn’t felt any pain like Sloane did, but there was a slight creak in his right knee that hadn’t been there before.

“Reporting as ordered. Your Majesty.” The Knight said, using Desmond’s title almost as afterthought. He didn’t have to face the full Court, at least. The hall was empty save for the Mage King, the royal knights assigned to his protection, one gentleman that he’d never been before in his life who smacked of nobility by his dress and his mannerisms, and General Suddert. The older warrior hadn’t aged very gracefully, but he still had the insignias of a post in the High Command of the Mage Knights. “I understand that you requested me specifically for this assignment.”

“Yes, I did.” Desmond replied, leaning his chin on his fist and staring at the Knight with lazy focus. “Your skillset among the Mage Knights is particularly diverse, thanks to your experience in the RRD as well as in the royal knights. We are to dispatch a diplomatic representative to...to these  _ talks _ with the leaders of Logos.” He explained, biting the word off as though it had a bitter taste. The Mage King shook it off and gestured to the finely dressed nobleman that the Knight had pegged earlier. “This is Viscount Forne Barnaval, whom I have chosen to represent Atlantis in the upcoming negotiations. His safety and security I will leave in your hands. After all, who better to protect an agent of the Crown than the famously talented  _ Bezel’s Knight? _ Why, you were the first name I thought of!” He remarked with false cheer. “It was quite the gossip back when my dear father was still alive how  _ devoted _ you were in executing your duties. The Viscount should be fortunate if you are half as focused in safeguarding his person as you were with my dear departed sister. But I do hope that you’ll do a better job of managing him. It wouldn’t do for you to lose a second charge in the midst of turmoil.”

The Knight was seeing red as Desmond lanced him with barb after thinly veiled barb. His experience and the precise measure of his control allowed him to tamp down the blaze of the magic he felt burning in his heart, stilling the blaze and his emotions until he no longer felt like running the miserable bastard through with his sword. He turned his attention to the stiff-laced Viscount, and bowed his head ever so slightly. “Viscount Barnaval. I have not had the pleasure of meeting you before.”

“Yes, well.” The blond-haired man said with a small smile. He had the fair complexion and bearing of a Eurosian who lived along the lands where the great glaciers along the north of the world ended. “I had not yet assumed the title when you and the late princess were conducting your inspections of the world. My father was a rather severe man until his demise. I believe that Princess Bezel elected not to meet with him during her tour. Put the old bastard in a terrible fit of pique for several weeks after. But. I should be glad to have your companionship during these talks. I doubt these Logosians are at all prepared for open combat or the threat of war, but your service record speaks for itself. It should keep them and the rabble that surrounds them from trying anything too hasty.”

“Very well.” Desmond said. “Thank you, Viscount. You are dismissed to see to your preparations. Your escort shall be waiting for your at the skyskiff yard in two hours’ time.”

“As you say, your majesty.” The Viscount said, dipping into a low bow. He walked off and the Knight made to follow him, but then the Mage King raised a hand to stop him.

“Lieutenant. We aren’t quite finished with your briefing yet.”

“Sire.” The Knight forced himself to turn and look back to Desmond Lantea, and to General Suddert who stepped forward with a more sober expression than his leader. “There is more information?”

“Yes.” General Suddert said, and pulled out a small leatherbound notepad, worn from use. “It has long been of great interest to the Mage Knights to keep a more  _ covert _ presence in the provinces where the Logosian Adherents succeeded in establishing a foothold. It became much more important once they banded together and declared themselves an independent country under the name of Logos. However, our ability to get any useful or vital information out of them has been somewhat hit and miss. Some agents go missing. Some fed back reports of questionable validity before they disappeared, only to be seen later in Logosian employ. The security around their major players is impressive, but we’ve worked out who most of the ranking figures in authority are. With the exception of one. We’ve never had an agent witness them directly. We’ve never had an agent even catch their name. But there is a craftsman and artificer of particularly great skill in Logos who, we  _ believe, _ is largely responsible for the advancements in their standard of living and their mobility. Any reports of this fellow are very short. They are known only by their title; The Artificer. And once,  _ just once, _ a report briefly seen by one of our spies before they disappeared after giving their last report suggested the name ‘Able’ as being associated with the Artificer, but we aren’t sure if that’s the Artificer’s actual name, or a pseudonym, or just a member of their team.”

“Unfortunate.” The Knight said. “But how does this tie in to the upcoming negotiations?”

“While the identity of The Artificer is unknown, the impact of his work is not.” Suddert grumbled. “Not everyone in the Logosian state apparatus is so careful with their secrets as those in The Artificer’s inner circle are. The timing of their announcement of desiring a re-negotiation and presumably a push for full independence separate from Atlantis was suspect to us. Why didn’t they do so a year ago? At first we suspected it was merely a half-measure, something that served as a stepping point that the aging Mage King wouldn’t go off on. But then some of our agents managed to get certain government representatives talking. One of them bragged about how ‘something big’ had been developed. How it was going to change the world and give Logos the upper hand. Some kind of powerful magical artifact that supposedly outclassed Ascalon.”

The Knight’s eyes widened at that. “More powerful than the sword that founded Atlantis? Be serious. That has to be just loose talk. There’s no weapon more powerful than Ascalon.”

“Aye, that was our determination as well.” Suddert exhaled. “At least until we began hearing from other unconnected agents elsewhere of some great Working, an Artifact peerless in its power and quality. It’s yet unconfirmed, but Supreme Commander Jorran Lantea has reason to be worried and suspect that there is some truth to the rumors.”

“I see. And my assignment in guarding the Viscount during his time as the representative of Atlantis has a secondary role then.”

“Yes.” Desmond Lantea confirmed. “While tending to your duties as the leader of Viscount Barnaval’s security detail, you are instructed to try and make some inroads to discovering the identity of this Artificer and the truth behind his ‘Powerful Artifact’. If Logos has attained a power which makes them think that they can demand independence from Our Benevolent Rule, then steps will have to be taken.”

_ Steps like war, _ the Knight supplied to himself quietly. He had always been good at suppressing his reactions, but there must have been some tell that he didn’t account for, because the Mage King’s eyes gleamed. 

“My father was a weak and vacillating man at the end of his reign. Where once he believed in strength and suppression, he started doubting the righteousness of our cause after my sister’s demise. He balked at open conflict in the early days when Logos was more an idea than a reality, and we are now reaping the harvest of weeds that were allowed to grow in our garden. Terra can only stand strong against its enemies when it is united behind the rule of Atlantis.”

“There are others, sire.” The Knight suggested. “Others you could have turned to for this task. Why choose me for it?”

“Because even now I harbor doubts as to your loyalties.” Desmond explained, examining his fingernails. “I offer you this chance to ease my concerns and prove yourself to Atlantis.”

He stood straighter, staring back at the Mage King. “My loyalties were always to Atlantis, and to Bezel.”

“Yes.” Desmond smiled, the kind of smile the great lizards who swam in the rivers of Aroca had. “And where were hers?”

 

***

 

_ Logos, Terra _

_ The Capital City of Lux _

  
  


It had once been called Keratos, back when it was still part of Atlantis. The name had been changed to  _ Lux _ once Logos was founded, and the Adherents had chosen the name for the same reason they had gone with Logos as their movement and their nation. Logic as the guiding force behind their now established presence, and at the heart of it, Light. 

For reasons that were most definitely scripted and intended to humble the Viscount and the rest of his party from Atlantis, they were instructed to land at the airship docks on the outskirts of Lux, and were given a small escort of ‘lawkeepers’ to guide them to the heart of the city, where the talks were to take place. 

Keratos and its province had always been peaceful. Not far from a sizable lake and close to the sea between Aroca and Euros, it had a varied terrain and a mild climate that lent itself well to farming. The lowlands that surrounded it were fertile and lush, and it had all been rather peaceful when the Knight and Bezel had toured it in his youth. Peaceful on the outside, at least. Keratos itself had been divided, with checkpoints and a border between the inner city where the upper castes had been and the outer city where the lower castes and servants and the undesirables stayed. Just like Banali City. Just like Atlantis. Just like nearly every other provincial capital was.

But  _ Lux _ had no such walls. Lux was wide open, and in the outer portion of the city, the people dressed in clothes that weren’t patched together rags. Children ran and chased each other, playing games. Land vehicles undoubtedly inspired by skyskiffs transported goods and people. No building looked dilapidated, even in what had once been the slums.

“We are very proud of the work that was put into Lux.” One of the lawkeepers said to them, noting the incredulous looks on their faces. “It is not the same city it was when Atlantis ruled it. It is more now than it was.”

The Knight said nothing and just stared. The magic and the level of artifice on display...it was innovative in ways that he had never thought of. That nobody had. There were small wells, smaller than he was used to seeing, and fresh, clean water was not brought up by the bucketful, but ran from pipes and faucets. A luxury he’d only ever witnessed on Atlantis and in the estates of the ruling nobility, but here...here, it was available for all. He watched as the larger vehicles glided close to the ground and came to a stop on a street corner, and a door opened up to allow its occupants to disembark while more got on. He saw magic users of the lower end of the power spectrum, Reds and Oranges with their auras glowing and using their magic to charge uniformly shaped thin circular runestones that he saw handed about as  _ currency  _ in the shops and stalls of bustling markets.

“You use magic in the place of coin?” Viscount Barnaval asked. 

“Yes.” The lawkeeper said. “Who has access to gold or silver but the rich and the well to do? And what good is gold and silver by itself? It is cold metal, nothing more. But  _ magic _ can heat a home, or cook a meal. Magic can make plants grow or heal wounds. And everyone has magic. Everyone has value here.”

The people of Lux watched the entourage passing by with dubious consideration. The other guards assigned to the Viscount were wary, but the Knight just let himself bear witness to it all, taking in the sights of a completely different way of living. One without walls, and where people, if they weren’t exactly equal, seemed to have greater opportunities for their happiness and prosperity. Bezel would have loved it here, he thought to himself, then winced and looked away. 

The opulence of the buildings improved as they moved further into the city, but they weren’t guided to the former estate of the ruling noble. Instead, in a building that the Knight vaguely remembered as being a museum before, they walked in and realized that they had been taken to the seat of the new government. Most of the art still remained, and many people still wandered the halls with duties that were either part of the Logosian infrastructure or tertiary to them.

They were brought into a large room that must have been an exhibit hall once, but which was now a meeting hall. Most of the Viscount’s men were asked to remain outside with the lawkeepers, but they did allow the Knight to accompany the Viscount at the noble’s sputtering protests. The Viscount sat while the Knight stood vigil, and they were given two glasses and an urn of cool, clean water.

Five minutes of waiting later, the Viscount was fuming while they waited for the Logosian contingent to arrive. “Abominable. Absolutely abominable!” He seethed. The Knight had been standing by the large windows and looking outside, preferring to watch the city of Lux rather than pretend he gave a fig about Barnaval’s petty discomfort. “This is how they treat a distinguished guest? No snacks? No wine or even so much as a bottle of beer?”

“I didn’t think you came here to be wined and dined, sir.” The Knight said, looking away from a street performer who was making nearly ten balls swirl around him as part of a complicated juggling act, ensconced in red auras. “I doubt that you’ll have the time to worry once these negotiations begin.”

The Viscount huffed. “Please.  _ Negotiations.” _ He muttered sullenly, and the Knight tamped down the urge to slap the man. Was he really the best that Atlantis could send? Or merely the man that the new Mage King felt best represented his values?

His ruminating came to an end when the doors opposite of the one they had come in from opened, and a small procession of plainly dressed individuals came marching in. To the Knight’s surprise, he recognized some of them as he moved to stand behind the Viscount, and not just from the limited intelligence available to the Mage Knights.

Leading them was the charismatic man who had inspired the Logosian Adherents in their early days, and now apparently served as a voice in government. His blond hair had thinned some since the Knight had last seen him, but the easy smile of Deakin Validus hadn’t gone away. To his dumbstruck horror, the dark-haired man that followed him was even more recognizable.  _ Dai Kuryak. _ The Wolf. Baron Danel Rusla of Ganarus Province. There were two other men he didn’t recognize, and accompanying them was a thin figure who wore a thick white hooded cloak and moved slowly, gracefully in a way that made it seem that they didn’t walk into the room so much as glide into it.

“Greetings, our distinguished guests from Atlantis. My name is Deakin Validus, First Speaker of Logos. We thank you for coming today.” The contingent from Logos sat down across from the Viscount, looking calm and settled. “Who do we have the honor of meeting?”

“I am Viscount Forne Barnaval, of Euros, the chosen representative to speak on behalf of Atlantis and the Mage King.”

“I see.” Validus let his eyes shift over to the Knight, and frowned. “And your friend? He seems familiar to me. What is your name, sir?”

“His name is unimportant.” Barnaval waved a hand dismissively. “He heads my security detail, if you wish to ask after his presence. And the rest of you?” 

The Knight bristled silently under the barb, keeping his focus on the Logosians assigned to the talks. Aside from Validus, it seemed that his old ‘friend’ Danel Rusla had been chosen to serve as the head of Logos’ thinly disguised military force. It was a move that made sense, especially considering how Ganarus Province had been one of the first to convert fully to the doctrines espoused by the Adherents. The other two men were introduced as Pinocot and Magodo from Asa and Aroca respectively, who served together as heads of internal affairs. The Knight turned his attention to the last person in the room and narrowed his eyes, wondering why they hid themselves beneath a white cloak and kept their head bowed, not even showing their face.

His brain stuttered when Validus announced the fifth cloaked individual as Artificer Able, who worked in Applied Artificing. It was a department and a thing that the Knight had never heard of, but given the level of advancements on display for use by the common folk within Lux, it had to be important. The name immediately caught his interest, because it had been brought up by General Suddert in his briefing. Was he looking at a member of The Artificer’s team? The Artificer himself? And beyond that, there was something in how Able held himself…

Speaker Validus and Viscount Barnaval spoke at length with steadily decreasing politeness, and the Knight tuned them out as he focused on Able. Something kept him on edge as he looked at the individual, something he found himself unable to readily dismiss. His senses screamed at him to pay more attention, even as the cloaked figure sat in a posture that seemed almost bored with the discussion. So was the Knight, at least up until the conversation suddenly derailed when Validus, in response to another bit of puffery from the Viscount, calmly told the Atlantean noble that Logos would no longer be supporting Atlantis.

“What?” Barnaval sputtered, leaning forward. “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean, Representative Barnaval, that Logos herewith declares itself and all of the member provinces who have elected to live under our tenets and our banner, completely and fully independent from Atlantis.”

“You dare?”

“We no longer have a need for a Mage King or a force of nobility of Atlantis.” Danel Rusla rumbled beside Validus, immediately drawing the focus of the room. “Birthright and the innate power within a person is no longer a measurement of their worth or their fitness to rule. In truth, there is only one person we would’ve ever considered for the position. And they did not want it.”

Able shifted a little as Rusla spoke, and the movement drew the Knight’s gaze back on them. Partly to sate his own curiosity and partly because he knew that Barnaval was getting ready to say something patently  _ stupid, _ he interrupted.

“Artificer Able.” The Knight said, having not spoken the entire time that the meeting was in effect. The figure shrouded in the white cloak stiffened up as he spoke, another curious detail that pricked in the back of his mind. “Why is it that everyone else in this chamber appears with their faces on full display, but you hide your features from us? Is there something you feel the need to hide? I don’t know much about negotiations like these, but it seems a sign of bad faith to be so secretive.”

The mage didn’t speak or utter a sound, and Validus quickly cut in.

“We respect Able’s opinion, but they are not who you are negotiating with in these talks.” Validus turned back to the Viscount. “Now then. How quickly can Atlantis pull their forces back from our new allied provinces? We are eager to see a smooth and painless transition.”

“Atlantis has long protected the world.” Barnaval ground out. “The Mage King wished me to impress upon you all the severity of this move. We do not tolerate dissent, sedition, or treason, and that is what these moves are.”

“Treason would be to act in a way that weakens or harms Atlantis.” Validus pointed out. “We do not wish conflict with Atlantis. We wish only to be left alone, to live without the unfair burden of its corrupted rule and the weight of servitude.”

“And when trouble comes to the people of Logos? When invaders from the stars or creatures from beyond the Void appear, who will defend Logos then?” Barnaval snapped. “If you leave our power, you leave our protection.”

“Logos can defend itself.” Rusla announced confidently. “In time, perhaps we might consider joint operations with select units within the Mage Knights, but for now, our independence is our first priority.”

“You think that you have the power to protect yourselves?” Barnaval thundered, going red in the face. The Knight ignored the man’s rhetoric, still looking at Able who hunched even tighter within their cloak. He came to a decision, one made in haste and with little deliberation.

In a quick movement of his wrist and his fingers along with a whispered word of power, the Knight cast a managrasp spell and focused it on the hood of the white cloak covering Artificer Able. The hidden figure reacted, leaning back, but the Knight needed only a flick of his fingers to make his spell throw the hood back and reveal the face underneath.

A woman of about his age stared back at him with wide and frightened brown eyes and straight brown hair. He stared at her from across the table, wondering why he’d felt so uneasy around Able. And then his eyes drifted down to her throat...where a familiar choker rested, along with a red stone etched with black lines. It had been ten years, but the self-flagellation of his mistakes had kept his memories alive. He would always recognize that trinket.

The Heartstone. Bezel’s Heartstone.

 

“Where did you get that?” The Knight growled, as Rusla jumped up to his feet and Validus and the Viscount both looked at the Knight like he was possessed. 

“Contain yourself, knight!” Validus exclaimed, and when the Knight ignored him and went to move around the table, Danel stood in his path.

“Don’t.” The former Baron of Ganarus Province said thickly. All the while, the Knight didn’t look away from Able, or the Heartstone she wore around her neck.

“That’s not  _ yours. _ It’s hers!” The Knight snapped. “You have no right to wear it!”

“You will stop this foolishness this  _ instant, _ you addlepated simpleton!” Barnaval yelled at him. “Stand down!”

All the while, Able looked shocked and frozen with indecision. Not truly frightened of him, but nonetheless paralyzed.

“When she surrenders that choker and confesses to where she stole it, then I shall stand down, and not a moment sooner!” The Knight snapped, and Danel’s thick arms wrapped around him, keeping him from lunging ahead.

The indecision passed, and resignation filled Able’s face, familiar and yet wholly different. 

“Enough.” Able sighed, holding up a hand for patience. “He wants answers? Then I’ll give them to him. But only once he stops acting like a rampaging mammoth.”

Still bristling and on edge, the Knight nodded stiffly and allowed Danel to shove him back to his side of the table. 

“You think I stole this?” Able asked him softly, and there was something in her voice that stung at his heart. 

“Yes.” The Knight swallowed back the tears he felt coming up. “Because I know who that belonged to. I know who  _ made _ it. I know it is stolen, because she would never part with it. Not while she lived.”

Able laughed at that, sad and long, and tapped a finger on its surface. A faint gleam of golden light shone out of the dark marks etched into it, and when she looked at him again, her eyes were no longer brown. They were green, and those green eyes took his breath away.

He knew those eyes.

 

“I can’t steal what’s always belonged to me.” She told him, and a faint aura of gleaming, iridescent violet covered her for a moment before disappearing. When it went, it took the brown coloring of her hair with it, and replaced it with fiery red, and the green eyes remained.

Viscount Barnaval choked as he stared at the face of Artificer Able. The Knight wobbled and found that he had to set a hand to the table to keep himself from falling to his knees. 

Able had been a pseudoname after all. 

“I am The Artificer.” Bezel Lantea said, older, stunningly beautiful, and tired as she looked back at the Knight. “And much to the contrary of popular belief, I am very much alive.”

“Your...your highness.” Viscount Barnaval got out, and he shifted in a duel between trying to bow while he sat and not moving at all.

Bezel glanced at the puffed up noble briefly and rolled her eyes. “No. Not for a long time now.” She told the man, and looked back to her former lover.

Her  _ husband. _ And she smiled bitterly.

“Hello, My Knight.”

 

***

 

His wife was alive.

_ Bezel _ was  _ Alive. _

Able, they had called her. It was so obscure a name that anyone else would think it was pulled from a hat. But the Knight knew better. She’d just taken her mother’s name of  _ Aibulwalt _ and slashed off a piece of it.

“Well.” First Speaker Validus sighed. “So much for that secret.”

Bezel laughed, a brief and soft little noise that pulled at the Knight’s heart. Sweet Mana, he  _ missed _ hearing her laugh. “No hiding behind illusions, it seems. Not with him.” She glanced at the Knight for another long second, then turned her gaze on Viscount Barnaval, and the mixture of mirth and sadness disappeared for steel. “Now, then. Representative Barnaval. I understand that this is a lot to take in, and you are perhaps tired from your journey here to Lux. Why don’t you recess until tomorrow so you can rest and reflect on the Logosian proposals for a smooth transition.”

“You mean  _ your _ proposals, don’t you, your highness?” Barnaval stammered, still in shock, but recovering enough to work back up to irritation again. Bezel smiled at him and shook her head.

“No. I do not  _ rule _ here. Or serve in the council that does.” Bezel looked over to Validus and nodded, then motioned to Danel Rusla. “Danel? Could you walk with me for a moment?” 

“Of course, my lady.” Danel said, as smooth as glass. She left with the head of Logos’s military in tow, and Speaker Validus cleared his throat to gather everyone’s attention once they were gone.

“I believe our dear Archmage’s suggestion is well considered. We have set up quarters for the use of yourself and your party, Representative Barnaval. We shall adjourn for the day and meet tomorrow midmorning, after we’ve all had some breakfast and a chance to wake up properly.”

“Yes. Quite.” Barnaval said. “There is  _ much _ we have to discuss.” He got up and started towards the door, then paused and looked back to the Knight, who was still sitting even when everyone else was moving off. “Well? Are you coming?” It was a few seconds more before the Knight could do so, and they left the conference room.

Out in the hallway, Barnaval whirled on him immediately. “Did you know?” He demanded. The Knight blinked, his mind still racing in other directions.

“What?”

“That she was alive. That  _ Princess Bezel Lantea _ was still alive, you lummox. Did. You.  _ Know?!” _ Barnaval elaborated, now mad as a hornet while the rest of the knights assigned to his protection jerked at the news.

The Knight shook his head. “No. If I knew she was, do you think I could have left her?”

“I don’t know what I think about you.” Barnaval muttered, turning his head away with a sniff. “One hears so many things about  _ Bezel’s Knight, _ after all. And now you’re here, and she’s alive, and at the heart of this. What a bleeding mess.”

The Knight shook his head and looked to the other knights who were with them, and to a pair of lawkeepers who came up to escort them out. “Go with the Viscount to our designated quarters. I have business to see to.”

“Running back to her side, are you?” Barnaval said accusingly. He probably wanted the Knight to flinch and feel guilty, but that wasn’t the reaction the representative got out of him. The Knight just stared him down until the man withered and looked away. 

“I plan on getting answers.” The Knight said to him coldly. “And of everyone here, I am the one person that might be able to drag them out of her.”

“Well, that much is true.” Barnaval exhaled, and pushed a hand through his hair with an aggrieved sigh. “Damnit. See if you can’t figure out why these Logosians are so certain that they can declare independence and survive any possible military response while you’re at it.”

“I’ll try and remember that.” The Knight said, and marched back into the conference room, leaving the other Atlanteans behind in a mad dash to catch up to Bezel before she disappeared from his life again. He cared far less about Barnaval’s priorities than his own, and his own questions would have to come first.

Like how Bezel could leave him mourning for her for ten years and not feel a thing.

 

***

 

She wasn’t in the conference room or the hallway beyond it. Some of the Logosians who got in his way were less than thrilled at seeing an Atlantean knight in full gear storming into what were corridors meant for authorized people only, but First Speaker Validus either remembered him, or took one look at the Knight’s expression and decided he wasn’t there to kill anyone and told him which door Bezel had left through.

He rushed through it and back into full unfiltered daylight, pulling up short when he saw Bezel looking tired still as she spoke with Danel Rusla.

Danel, who had known the truth of her whereabouts all along and  _ lied to him. _ Danel, whose arm she touched with tenderness and in comfort as they both paused in their conversation and spun about to size the Knight up.

“Hm. It seems you were right after all.” Danel mused, and Bezel sighed, turning her head back to Danel.

“You’ll take care of it?”

“Of course.” Danel pulled Bezel into a hug. “I’ll see you tomorrow then? Even if you’re not coming to the talks again?”

“Do you really think it would help Logos to have me sitting in that room once they’ve gotten over the shock, my dear Danel?” She asked him, and the Knight seethed when Danel laughed and kissed her forehead with easy familiarity.

“No. Probably not. But you do make things interesting, at least.”

“I think that  _ interesting _ is the last thing that these talks need to be.” Bezel smacked Danel’s arm and then shoved him away. “Now get going. And tell Boudica I told her to behave!”

“She only behaves if Sacha does!” Danel laughed, turning around at last and leaving. Bezel watched the enormous bear of a man go running off with an amused smile and a shake of her head.

She finally turned back and faced the Knight head-on, hiding her arms beneath the white cloak she was still wearing. The smile was gone, and she waited for him to speak first.

“You left. Everyone...everyone thought you were dead.”

“That was the point of disappearing.” She told him.

“I looked for you! I looked, and I looked!”

“And I didn’t want to be  _ found.” _ Bezel countered. “Not by anyone from Atlantis. Not by you, after you abandoned me.”

“You’re alive.” The Knight whispered, and took a step towards her. He froze when she took a step back, her eyes wary. “You’re alive. All these years, I thought...I thought you were gone. But you’ve been here.”

“What do you want, my Knight?” She asked him, running a hand through her hair and sounding so much older than he knew she was. “For me to run into your arms and pretend that the last ten years didn’t happen? I asked you to leave and to come with me. You made your choice.”

“And I regretted it five seconds after you were gone.” He confessed, keeping his eyes locked onto hers. Stormcloud blue and gray met emerald green, and she stood frozen, even when he drew nearer. “I never stopped thinking of you. I want to be angry at you. I want to scream at you. But I can’t.” He crumbled. “Right now, the only thing that I’m feeling is relief. You’re  _ alive. _ Mana preserve me, my Bezel, you’re alive.”

She swallowed thickly. “I’m not yours.”

“Am I still yours, though? Am I still your Knight?” He asked her softly. Her eyes misted up and she turned away.

“Enough. I don’t have time for this. I’ve got a million projects to deal with when I get back to work, and…”

“Can I come with you?” He blurted out, cutting her off. She looked over her shoulder at him, wary and vulnerable. “Please, Bezel.”

“Don’t you have an assignment already as that arrogant bastard’s guardian?” She questioned, a deflection he saw through immediately.

“He has other guards, and they have an escort from your officers. He doesn’t need me there to babysit him.”

“I don’t think that anyone in my coven would be all that thrilled at seeing a Mage Knight come storming in.” She pointed out, still trying to hold him back.

“I can go without my armor, you know.”

“You’re still Atlantean.”

“We aren’t at war, so far as I know. And I doubt you’d be willing to show me your most sensitive projects, seeing as how you have trouble trusting me.”

“I  _ don’t _ trust you.” She muttered, putting a hand to her head and sighing. “No, this is stupid. You’re not coming with me. You never cared about my work before…”

“Yes, I did.” He argued. “Even when I didn’t understand it all, I cared. I should have seen it. Who else but my brilliant Bezel could be the mysterious Artificer that was the power behind Logos?” She hesitated, and he knew she was close to surrendering to his request. He reached to his swordbelt and unbuckled it, sliding his sword, scabbard and all, free of the leather and holding it out to her.

She stared at him, still huddled in her white cloak, and looked between his sword and his eyes. “You’d allow yourself to be disarmed?”

He held back the thickness in his throat. “I am your Knight. My life is yours.”

 

Bezel Lantea, Archmage and Artificer of Logos, slowly reached out and claimed his sword from him, holding it close to her chest as she looked at him with new eyes.

If she didn’t smile, her expression resembled something awfully close to it.

 

***

 

_ The Logosian Coven _

_ Capital City of Lux _

_ Afternoon _

 

“Mistress Bezel! Mistress Bezel!”

“Welcome back, Mistress Bezel!”

“How was your meeting, Archmage Bezel?”

“Archmage Bezel, if I could borrow a moment of your time…” 

The Knight found himself slowing as his Bezel brought them past the heavy guard cordon outside of a building made almost entirely out of glass and steel. They had been on edge, but had relaxed once the small ground craft set down on its struts in a marked spot outside of it and Bezel had pushed the hood of her white cloak back. Once they were inside, having moved past two sets of doors, he found himself breathing in the scent of moist air and countless trees and vegetation, and paths of laid stone that went  _ around _ the towering foliage and shrubs. It reminded him of the jungles of Aroca, the wilds of Asa, the Grand Savannah. And throughout the building were dozens of mages who looked unlike anyone he had ever seen up in the royal alchemist’s laboratories of Atlantis or in the Mage Knight divisions or in the labor forces in Below. It wasn’t that they came from every continent, and that dark-skinned Arocans conversed and argued with the fair-skinned Eurosians who lived in the shadows of the great glaciers, or that Asans in simple robes devoid of any artifice walked in cadence with others who dressed in long-sleeved jackets and rugged pants bristling with pockets and tools and small charms imbued with minor Workings. It was that they were all so relaxed and at peace, and happy to be here and working together. There was no sense of competition or superiority, no bickering, no resignation at working somewhere just because it had been ordered. No. The mages here in the glass dome full of vibrant plants and flowers and trees glowed with a sense of belonging and purpose and cooperation that put him at ease.

And all of them greeted Bezel with admiration and devotion and loyalty that she had never commanded on Atlantis. 

“May I take your cloak, Archmage?” One of the Logosian mages asked politely.

“Yes, thank you.” Bezel told the young Arocan woman, undoing the clasp at her neck and shucking it off. “Tell me Izi, how goes your experiment?”

“Mixed results, my lady.” The dark-skinned and dark-haired mage mumbled, her face darkening as she took the white cloak and looked away. “I can get the wheat to grow, but sometimes it comes out...misshapen. Irregular.”

“Hm.” Bezel tapped her chin as the Knight gave his wife another once-over. Underneath her cloak, she wore light brown leggings and a flattering blouse. Mana, she had grown into a stunning woman, and she’d been gorgeous when she was 16. She would be 27 now, he realized. 

His mind ground to a halt when he caught sight of six tan brown stones etched with markings that ran up the collar of her blouse. 

Stones that seemed a perfect match to the blood red Heartstone she wore around her neck.

“You know, Izi, I think that Luan Ho was working with germinating seed tubers the last time I saw him? Maybe you two could get together. Who knows? You might give each other ideas.”

Izi’s face brightened. “Really? Oh, wonderful! Thank you, Mistress Bezel! I’ll talk to him right after I hang up your cloak outside your office!” The young Arocan woman bowed deeply and took off like a shot. Bezel’s smile widened and she bit her lip as she muffled a grin.

A young Eurosian lad with brown hair and slightly tanned pale skin came up next, smirking as he handed Bezel a mug of steaming hot tea. “They’ll give each other  _ ideas. _ Honestly. You know that Mr. Ho has been mooning at her from across the room for weeks now. When did you decide to start playing matchmaker, chief?”

“Everyone has a hobby, Parrin.” Bezel chuckled at last, taking a slight sip of her tea before she hummed in obvious pleasure. “Oh, wonderful. After the morning I’ve had, I needed this.”

“I take it the talks with Atlantis weren’t quite as smooth as you’d hoped?” The young man inquired, raising an eyebrow. He seemed to be about the age of 16 or 17, by the softness still in his face. 

“No.” Bezel said flatly, and the Knight winced at the censure he felt in that word. Parrin finally looked away from Bezel to the Knight and didn’t  _ quite _ frown.

“Chief, who’s this?”

“An old acquaintance.” Bezel said, and the Knight felt the barb dig in deep. “My Knight, back when I was still the princess of Atlantis. And this excitable ball of energy and sarcasm is Parrin, my student and intern.”

“I prefer the label of assistant to intern, actually.” Parrin hummed, giving the Knight a respectful nod. “Seeing as I get paid to make sure you remember to eat and keep your schedule straight.” He had a small carrier bag slung over his shoulder, and he reached down inside of it to produce a metallic square with a reflective surface and a strange inkless pen, along with a strange curved band of metal with a strange ovoid on one end. “Now then. I take it you want the highlights?” He asked crisply.

“If you’d please, Parrin.” Bezel took the band of metal from him and slipped it over her head, inserting the ovoid into the shell of her ear. She tapped the side of it, and the piece in her ear glowed a bit before assuming a slight dimmed light that flickered red, then blinked yellow, and settled on green.

“Right.” Parrin cleared his throat and tapped his strange pen on the thin square of metal in his hand, and the surface came to life, glowing with Atlantean script. The Knight gaped at it, but Parrin treated the marvel so casually that it left him unable to ask a question about it. “Quacalis and his team think they’ve sorted out where the short in the shield matrix is. They said they’d have it ready for a full test by tomorrow. Lifegrower Fehlis finished her proposal for an expedition to the unsettled western lands, and it just needs your approval.”

“You looked over it?” Bezel asked Parrin, taking another sip of tea as they kept on walking through the gardens, people still sending greetings and nods to Bezel as they passed by.

“Yes, chief, I did.”

“Your thoughts?”

“It seems like a good idea, but I wonder why she’s so keen on starting this project now with everything else going on.”

“The study of life is a valuable endeavor, Parrin, no matter what other distractions might be going on.” Bezel held out a hand. “She has my permission, and Validus won’t object to funding it with my approval already given. Give me the stylus.” 

Parrin sighed. “And you always say that you aren’t a princess, Bezel.”

“I’m not.” Bezel laughed softly, taking the stylus from him and scrawling her name on the metal surface. “Princesses don’t have to deal with committees. I find it refreshing. Now, was there anything else?”

“Have you eaten lunch yet?” Parrin asked her bluntly.

“Parrin. What else is on my list?”

“So that means you  _ didn’t _ eat lunch. Again.” Parrin frowned at her.

“Parrin. Stop  _ mothering me _ and tell me what else I have to do.” Bezel countered.

Parrin stared back at her, then pointedly looked at the Knight. As scrawny as he was, he was nearly the Knight’s height, a gangly weed of a stripling. “Was she always this driven?”

“I was there when she used her Lifesight spell for the first time at Dapana and drove herself into mana exhaustion helping us find the survivors.” The Knight told the boy honestly. “If that answers your question.”

Parrin huffed. “Yes. Quite. I was afraid that was the answer.” He looked back at Bezel. “Shaman Jahani is conducting a class in guided meditation and mana awareness in half an hour, and was hoping you might be there to help some of the novices. That means you have enough time to get down to the dining room and  _ eat something _ before you collapse from hunger. Again.”

“You first, you little pest.” Bezel said, reaching out and ruffling the boy’s hair, earning a cry of disgust from him as he backed up and tried to smooth it out again. “You’re still skinny as a rail, and I’ve known you for three years now.”

Parrin harrumphed and looked to the Knight. “Right. Could I bother you for a favor?”

“Within reason.” The Knight hedged.

Parrin pointed at Bezel. “Take her down and get her to actually eat something that doesn’t come in a cup for once. I get the feeling she might actually listen to you, because she never takes  _ my _ advice.”

“Yes, well, that must be because I’m older than you!” Bezel exclaimed, rolling her eyes. 

“What’s that you’re always telling us in our classes on Principles of Artificing, chief?” Parrin countered.  _ “Age is just a number?” _ Bezel started walking away, and Parrin smirked in triumph before looking to the Knight. “Seriously, though. She needs to…”

“I’ll take care of it.” The Knight said to Parrin, and her assistant sized him up for a few more seconds before nodding in approval.

“Good to meet you, Bezel’s Knight. Welcome to the madhouse.” Parrin powered down his strange square device and slipped it in his bag, then sauntered off in the opposite direction. The Knight chuckled and went after Bezel, catching up to her in fifteen seconds. He found her arguing with nobody, which put him off until he saw her holding two fingers to the strange loop she’d slipped over her ear.

“...can’t believe you’ve been sitting on a pre-arranged announcement all of this time, Deke! What was the point of all the false reports and the tight security if…” She paused, still glowering into thin air as the Knight came to a stop six paces away from her, unnoticed by the Artificer in her irritation. “No, I  _ didn’t _ know he would be there. Why would he be? The last I heard, he was serving under Sloane, why in Mana’s name would he be a bodyguard for that puffed up…” Her eyes flickered to the side as she spoke, and she froze when she finally saw the Knight standing close by. Caught out, she shrugged. “Deke, I’m going to have to call you back.” She tapped the earpiece, and the light shining from it went from blue back to green. “Sorry.”

The Knight could have gone off on her for a dozen different things, so he focused instead on a topic that might be safer. The device she was wearing. “What’s that? Were you talking to someone? How? Is that...Is that  _ Sending Stone _ artificing?”

“Of a sort.” Bezel shrugged nonchalantly. “Atlantis may have been keen on keeping the Sending Stones I developed as is and limited to military use. Logos, thankfully, felt differently. There’s always room for improvement.”

“Right.” The Knight said, his head spinning with what that could potentially mean. Questions for later. “I believe someone said something about lunch?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Well, I am.” The Knight said, because he could definitely eat after the day he’d had, and he had no intention of letting her disappear on him again. “Come on, Bezel. Don’t make me have to tell your assistant I failed in fulfilling his request.”

Mentioning Parrin’s name deflated her resolve. “Fine.” She surrendered, and motioned to a set of stairs that led belowground nearby. “The kitchens are this way. Some days, that boy’s more trouble than he’s worth.”

“So why do you keep him on as your assistant?” The Knight asked her.

“Because he’s smarter than most people cared to know. Too smart to be rotting away as an indentured servant on a Eurosian noble’s farm, which is where I found him, paying off the debt of his dead father.” Bezel explained, walking down the stairs.

The Knight followed her. “You can’t help it, can you?” She looked back at him as he asked that question, confused, and he went on. “You try to save everyone.”

Her smile then was sadder still. “Someone has to.” She told him. “You weren’t around to do it for me.”

 

***

 

She had always been brilliant, his Bezel. Brilliant because she could imagine things that nobody else had ever conceived of and sought answers where nobody else had thought to look. In the Coven that was hers, through and through, there was a mix of everything that was pure her.

After a light lunch that she did finally agree to eat, Bezel was a whirlwind of activity in motion that dragged the Knight behind her by the same magnetism that made every other mage and artificer in the glass dome rotate around her, drawn in and moving to an unheard cadence.

It took him hours to figure out why she looked so different, why she was so much more  _ alive _ and vibrant than she’d been even in his memories. Whether she was examining magical experiments conducted by the other mages in the Coven, participating (leading) meditation classes that were eerily familiar of the sort of thing that she used to do when they had been alone in the wilderness, or just walking through the gardens and running her hands along the leaves of the trees and the mana lillies and the other flowers and shrubs that grew inside of the glass building, she always left him on the back foot. It was because she was settled and content and  _ happy _ in a way that he’d never seen her before.

“You’re happy here.” The Knight said, as Bezel was filing away the last of the paperwork that had required her signature while people passed by her open-doored office, saying good night as they left for home. Bezel looked up at him and blinked. “I don’t think I ever saw you so settled before.”

She laughed once at that. “I probably wasn’t.” She admitted, getting up from her desk at last and stretching her arms above her head as she yawned. It did marvelous things to her chest, and Bezel caught him staring . She raised an eyebrow and he shrugged, smiling softly. She blushed a little and averted her eyes, then walked past him. “I’m doing what I love here. I’m making people’s lives better. Logos gave me a chance to be the kind of woman I always wanted to be.”

He followed her as they went back upstairs, catching the fading orange sunlight through the glass dome as they maneuvered through the garden. “And what kind of woman was that?”

“An inventor. A scholar.” She said to him, counting them off on her fingers. “An Artificer that was actually respected and  _ listened to. _ An explorer. And a teacher.”

The Knight considered that. “You were respected in Atlantis.”

“Was I?” She asked him crisply, stopping at the outer doors and looking over her shoulder at him. “Was I really respected for the girl I was, the ideas I had? Or was I nothing more than my  _ title _ to everyone? Nobody cared about Bezel. They only ever bothered to concern themselves with the princess, and even then, only for what they could get by associating with her. But here? In Logos? I’m not a powerless princess. I am known for  _ who _ I am. Not what I was.”

She walked outside, and tugged along on an invisible string, he followed. 

“You were mourned, you know.” He told her. “You were missed.”

“I heard about the funeral.” 

“No. After that.” The Knight said, not letting up. “Your father.” Her steps faltered a little, and he kept talking. “He was never the same after that. He...was different afterwards. He drifted in his final years. Losing you broke him.” Bezel kept on walking, listening but not bothering to respond. “I thought you would want to know.” He said gamely.

“I was the  _ spare _ child of his, the one he planned on selling off to whichever noble could give him the most in return.” Bezel finally answered, guiding them through the streets. She was tired and flagging, but her weariness seemed to have more to do with the conversation than how busy her day had been. “I wasn’t important until I was gone.”

“You were the best of him.”

“I am the best of my mother.” Bezel dismissed the idea. “I could care less about the promises from a man who never bothered to raise me, or to care for me.”

“You should care that he’s gone, you know.” The Knight accused her. “Because now your brother sits on the throne, and while your father was lenient in his final years, Desmond Lantea will not be so forgiving or lenient as the last Mage King was.”

Bezel went still at that, out in the middle of the street, and turned to address the Knight head-on. “What are you saying?” She asked lowly. Dangerously.

“I am saying that there is a window of opportunity here with you being alive.” The Knight urged her. “By now, the Viscount…”

“Representative.” Bezel muttered under her breath.

“The  _ Viscount _ Barnaval will have communicated with Atlantis as to the stunning revelation of your survival.” The Knight pressed on. “If you take advantage of it, if you were to return home, it would change things.”

“I  _ am _ home, my Knight.” She pointed out dryly. “Logos is my home.  _ Terra _ is my home. Atlantis is an over-privileged island that floats in the sky.”

“If your brother could be convinced that you ruled here, he…” Bezel’s hand came out in front of the Knight’s face, and he stuttered into silence. She looked hard at him.

“You’ve become hard of hearing in your old age.” She said. “I am not the  _ ruler _ here. I am not a princess. I am respected as an Artificer and a source of wisdom and strength. My brother’s lackey will have to deal with Validus and the council, the representatives  _ chosen _ by the people of Logos to see to the business of governing.” The Knight stayed silent, and she huffed, lowering her arm. “I’m hungry. Are you hungry? I’m hungry.”

“I could eat.” The Knight conceded. 

“Good.” Bezel started walking again. “We’ll pass through the market. I’ll buy you a meal and you can go toddle off back to the rest of your diplomatic envoy.”

He was loathe to be parted from her again. The Knight followed.

“What foods do they serve in Lux?”

“This is the heart of Logos, my Knight.” Bezel smirked, seemingly glad to be on a simpler topic. “What  _ don’t _ we have?”

 

***

 

Dinner consisted of steamed dumplings very close to the kind that the Knight remembered eating in central Asa a decade prior, but which had a different filling more reminiscent of Eurosian fare, along with the blazing heat of southern Asa. He had three skewers to her two and drank a fair amount of weak wine that had been further watered down by squeezed fruit juices, a concoction cooled by another machine that relied on the power of the mana-infused tokens that the Logosians used as their currency. The Knight was used to paying for his meals when abroad. It was a novel experience to have his payment serve as the cooking fuel for it as well.

“So. How’s Sloane?” She asked, as they wandered their way through the streets afterwards.

“Older. More wizened. Still a hardass.” 

“So not really all that different.”

“Not really, no. But he took me back after I transferred out of the royal knights. I prefer working in the RRD anyways. There’s more action there.”

“Have you seen much action?”

“Some incursions. Nothing as bad as that Surgalan slave trade you and I put a stop to. Thankfully, there’s been nothing from Beyond the Void.”

“Small mercies.” Bezel conceded. “And you made lieutenant. Any more of a promotion and you’d have to take Sloane’s job.”

“I think that’s what he’s been working towards, honestly.” The Knight answered, setting one arm behind his back while the other swung freely. “He’s coming up on retirement, but he’s made some hints about wanting to appoint his own successor to the post. In the RRD they get a little more autonomy to do that.”

“Any idea what his plans are after he retires?”

“None.” The Knight looked to her. “You had some ideas?”

“He would be welcomed here in Lux.” The Knight made to protest and Bezel held up her hand. “No. Not in that capacity. He’s served. But he’s an older man now, and he was the dearest friend of my mother in her previous life. I would be glad to keep him close and give him a room here in my home.”

The Knight hummed and looked at her, and settled his focus on the six brown charms that sloped down the collar of her tunic. “So. I see you made more stones. Are they like your Heartstone?”

“To a degree.” She hedged. Her hand came up and traced the surface of them unconsciously as she spoke. “They’re less than the Heartstone, but they’re tied to it.” She shrugged with a smile. “Reflections through glass.”

“You always said your Heartstone was your greatest creation.”

“It is. There will only ever be one.” Bezel said. “The other six Charms...You could call them insurance.”

“Insurance?” The Knight raised an eyebrow. “Insurance against what?”

“That nobody else could try to make more.” She exhaled. “They’re singular in their making. Bonded, in a way that ensures no more can exist while they do. Not that it’s likely that anyone from Atlantis could copy my work and find the perspective to forge a Working close to mine, but…”

“But your work has been used before.” The Knight finished for her. She chuffed and nodded.

“It has. And never again.”

“Are they weapons?” He asked her, and his heart started beating faster as he considered the six tan stones along the dipped collar of her shirt. 

“Is a shovel a weapon? Is a meat cleaver a weapon?” Bezel asked him. “A thing can be used in many ways.” She patted her hand over them. “But in my hands, at least, the Charms and the Heartstone can be a shield instead of a sword.”

Her hands being the  _ right _ ones, the Knight concluded. Because she did not wish to rule. Only to protect. And to guide.

“What could they do, if someone used them as a sword, instead of a shield?” He pressed, that lingering sense of danger making the hair on his neck rise. 

Bezel breathed in and out, and shook her head. It was a question she refused to answer, and the Knight found his own.

This was the great Artifact that made Logos so certain of itself. Bezel had remade the world all over again. The Heartstone was powerful enough on its own. That she now had six more…

 

She turned to him. “Are you afraid of me?”

“No.” The Knight quickly dismissed that idea, shaking his head. “Not of you.  _ For _ you.”

Bezel smiled and shook her head. “I can look after myself now.”

“You shouldn’t have to. Not while I’m here.”

“Are you here? Truly?” Bezel asked him, and her smile faded. “My home is here. Yours is in Atlantis. After your delegation concludes its business and Logos stands free, you will leave. You will return back to Sloane and the Mage Knights, and I will still be here.” 

He stepped closer to her, old feelings resurfacing far too quickly. “I don’t have to.”

Bezel jerked a little but didn’t step away from him. Her eyes were wide. “What?”

“Do you think that peace is possible?”

“The independence of Logos is inevitable. There is no cause for Atlantis to declare war. The role of Atlantis will change, but it will endure.” Bezel insisted. “Yes. I think peace is possible.”

“If there is peace between Atlantis and Logos…” The Knight went on, moving in even closer and raising an open hand to the side of her face. Her lips parted and she inhaled slowly, trembling. “Could I see you again? Would they allow it?”

“The local knights have been removed.” Bezel stammered. “There’s been some talk of allowing RRD forces into Logos for larger problems, but…” His fingertips traced her cheek and she gasped a little. “...but it’s not…”

He stepped in closer to her, and his hand slipped back into her hair. She shivered. 

“What are you doing?” Bezel whispered, even as her eyes fluttered.

“You know what I’m doing.” The Knight said, feeling his heart thunder underneath his ribs. 

“Don’t.” She said, and his hand stilled, tangled in the long strands of her red hair.

“You want me to stop?”

“You shouldn’t...You shouldn’t be here. You should go.” She got out, and closed her eyes. She was rigidly still as he passed his fingers through her auburn tresses, and when he stepped closer, she inhaled sharply.

But she didn’t step away from him.

“Do you  _ want _ me to go?” He asked her tenderly, and let his hand drop to trace her spine. She trembled at his touch.

“What are you doing to me?” Bezel whispered.

“Making up for lost time.” He told her. Maybe he was fooling himself. Maybe she had truly moved on. Maybe all he would have were his memories and the knowledge that she was alive in the world and happier than she’d ever been in Atlantis. Happier than she’d been when he was the only good thing in her world.

But she still was his world. 

“Do you want me to stop?” He repeated, letting his hand slide down until it rested in the small of her back. He pulled her towards him, and her eyes finally flew open right before she brought her hands up, palms out, and caught herself against his chest.

Her emerald green eyes gleamed in the waning sunset, and she stared up at him.

“Do you want me to leave?” The Knight asked huskily.

Bezel’s tongue poked out of her mouth and licked her upper lip. He could see the war behind her eyes playing out. Something had to break. 

Something did. Bezel shook her head and swallowed.

“No.” She said, and her fingers curled against his armor. “Don’t go.”

He pulled her flush against him and set his other hand in her hair, listening to her whimper. There was a plea in her eyes when she looked at him then, a desire reignited that set him ablaze.

The Knight leaned in, watching a single tear track down her face. Her eyes drifted shut again, surrendering to him, and her lips parted. He kissed her, and the world fell away from them.

 

***

 

_ Morning _

  
  


They went to her home and made love well into the night, falling into a familiar rhythm that neither of them had been able to forget. The Knight wrapped himself around her after and slept harder and more fully than he had in years, sending a prayer of thanks to the currents of mana for bringing him here, for giving her back to him. He woke up in the morning when she stirred in his arms, and though neither felt up to a morning repeat, they lingered and cuddled under the soft glow of their magelights, burning violet and glowing blue and circling above their heads. He traced the lines of her arms and the Heartstone, never removed even when every other shred of clothing had been. She summoned the other six to her with a gesture and the tan brown stones etched with their deep black glyphs flew from her clothes, settling against her bare skin as though they belonged there. Perhaps they did. As she hummed in satisfaction and lay in his arms, they glimmered in the aura of their magelights.

“So. What do you call these?” The Knight asked her, tracing a finger along the surface of the six stones from her right collarbone down to just above the valley between her breasts and back up again on her other side.

“They needed names?” Bezel asked, and even with his face buried in her hair, he could hear the smile she was wearing. 

“You love naming things.” He told her, and she laughed again. 

“Well, they don’t have names as such, not like my Heartstone. But...each focuses on a different ability of magic.” She brought a hand up and pointed to them. “Probability. Healing. Flames. Managrasp. Stormsfire. Insight.” She let her hand find his and squeezed it. “Magic can do more than that, but...these six Charms help out with those particular spell groups. Make it easier. Make them stronger.”

“The wonders you could do with these.” The Knight said softly. 

“Or the horrors.” Bezel reminded him. “I knew it was only a matter of time before someone cottoned on and tried to duplicate my Heartstone in lesser form.”

“You think Atlantis could make anything close to what you’ve forged?”

“The use of charms are far more widespread here in Logos than on Atlantis. We don’t rely on innate power as the sole measure of a person’s worth. What they contribute, what they make, what they invent, all these are precious. I am a teacher and a mentor and the Artificer, and I have many students doing many things.” Bezel shrugged. “Not every voice in Logos is peaceful, my Knight. I am not so idealistic that I am blind to their ambitions. Yes, I fear for what Atlantis could do if it attained such power. I fear for what Logos would do as well.”

“Aren’t you afraid of what you might try to do with them?”

“No. Not for a moment.” Bezel smiled, kissing his hand before finally sliding out of bed and moving to her closet. The Knight lay back and allowed himself to enjoy the sway of her hips as she sauntered to her clothes. “I know where that power comes from, and I respect it. In my hands, there is restraint.” She slipped a loose shirt on over her body, and another wave of her hand had the stones flying out from under the fabric, settling around its collar and the Heartstone at her neck. “I’ll clean up first. Why don’t you see about putting breakfast together for us?”

“Giving me orders again, are you?”

“Are you My Knight?” Bezel countered, looking over her shoulder at him. His mouth went dry when her emerald eye gleamed beneath a wild tress of her red hair. 

“Yes.” He said, and she smirked and all but skipped in to wash up. He stared after her retreating form when the door closed behind her, then shook it off and threw on his clothes and armor. He hadn’t done anything too strenuous and it didn’t smell terrible to him, so after strapping his sword she’d carried with her most of yesterday back in place, he went out and examined the kitchen. 

In place of a wood-burning stove was one that seemed to be powered by mana. There were a pile of charged coins resting beside it and a slot that fed into the machine next to the burners. It was unlike anything Atlantis possessed, this Logosian innovation not into weapons or armor or military ships, but solely to make living easier.

“I can do this.” He said to himself, and then scoured the pantry for whatever he could use. There was even a mana-powered icebox, and after examining his choices, he opted for scrambled eggs and fried vegetables. Simple and easy enough, and something that wouldn’t leave him with a stone in his belly during the morning negotiations.

That thought made him pause while the onions and mushrooms were sizzling in the iron skillet as he realized the depth of the mess he’d ended up in. Viscount Barnaval had charged him to uncover the great artifact that made Logos so certain that it could declare its independence from Atlantis, and now he knew what it was. It wasn’t anything that Danel Rusla or Speaker Validus possessed, not directly. It was Bezel’s Working that had been whispered of. It was the Charms, a mastery of runecrafting and artificing and magical theory beyond anything the world had ever seen which Atlantis was so fearful of. Not her Heartstone, that was little more than a self-charging mana reservoir. No, what Logos was betting on and what Atlantis, what her  _ brothers _ would be afraid of, were the six she had made in the ten years he’d been apart from her. 

Probability. Healing. Flames. Managrasp. Stormsfire. And Insight.

 

A whiff of burned onion hit his nose and he yelped, quickly stirring the pan and examining the damage, relieved that it wasn’t too terribly charred, just a little over-browned on one side. Chastened, the Knight stirred the pan of vegetables some more until he was satisfied with them, and then poured in the whipped eggs he’d prepared, cooking the mess into a scramble that cooked up fast. He plated it next to some fruit he’d found and cut up, and finished with two slices of old bread that he laid thick slabs of cheese on.

Drawn out by the smell, his estranged wife walked into the kitchen looking divine in a knee-length dress, the choker with her Heartstone present as always and the six Charms arranged around the dress’s collar. “Sweet mana, that smells good.” She breathed, and took a seat at the table. He slid her plate over to her along with a two-tined serving fork and a spoon, and she moaned appreciatively after the first bite. “I’d forgotten how good you were at cooking in the wilderness. Do you still find the time to do that, or are your meals all prepared by others these days?”

“I make it a point to get out and spend some time under the stars.” He said, pouring them each a glass of water with just enough wine in it to make it safe to drink. She made a face at it as she took a sip. “What?”

“Right. You still have to put alcohol in your water.” She said. “We’ve figured out the spells to make our water drinkable on its own. Even have them in charm form now. Just ensorcel a stone with the right runework, manage the incantation, and drop it into a cistern or a well.” 

The Knight laughed at that, shaking his head. “Unbelievable.”

“There are more ways to save lives than with a sword or a spellblast.” Bezel pointed her fork at him for a moment, then speared some more of her egg scramble. “You used to know that.”

The Knight paused. “I know that better than most in Atlantis.” He told her. “Or do you believe that Sloane and our unit has forgotten what the RRD was founded for?”

She winced a little. “No. I apologize. That was uncalled for.”

“It seems there’s much that we have to work on now that we’re back together.”

That sentence shouldn’t have surprised her as terribly as it did, but she lost her grip on her fork and another bite of her meal tumbled onto the table as she looked ahead. Not at him, really, but to some point over his shoulder, as though she’d suddenly realized something.

“What’s wrong?” He asked her.

“I...I hadn’t thought…” She stammered, startled beyond her usual reasonable cadence. The Knight found himself puzzled. He knew her better than anyone else, and she had never been at such a loss for words. Not even on the horrible night that she’d nearly burned down the castle and begged him to leave with her, and disappeared from his life had she been so frozen into silence. 

Her head shot up and there was  _ fear _ in her eyes as they heard the front door open, but she wasn’t looking towards the door. Bezel was looking at him. He couldn’t understand why…

“Mama!” The waifish voice of a girl squealed out, and then came small but loud footsteps, two pairs of them. A dark-haired boy dripping with water from his head and shirt came careening past the kitchen entryway, followed closely by a dark-haired girl whose face was scrunched up in rage. “Mama, Sacha won’t give me back my doll! Give it back, Sacha!”

“Not ‘til you say sorry for throw’n water at me!” Sacha roared back, making a sharp turn and doubling back to keep just out of her reach.

The Knight’s heart seized.  _ Mama, _ the girl had said.

_ Mother. _ Bezel was a mother? He jerked up to his feet, but Bezel moved quicker and stood in his path, and there was a mixture of protectiveness and fear gathered there that stopped him cold. She must have caught how stricken he felt, because her arm came back down, and the fear disappeared for outright guilt.

_ Later, _ she mouthed to him, and turned about to the chase in progress. He caught a shimmer of light from the Charm of Managrasp around her neck, and then the two children running in the house were enveloped by a gentle violet aura that matched her own. 

“Sacha. Boudica.” She admonished them. “What have I told you about running inside?”

“Not to.” The boy mumbled sullenly, and looking around Bezel from where he was in the kitchen, the Knight could see that he did indeed have a small cloth doll in his hand, just like the girl -  _ Boudica _ \- had accused him. Bezel sighed and let go of her managrasp spell, and the two children shuffled on their feet a little, guilty under her observant gaze.

“Now, I can see very well that you’re all wet, Sacha, and I can see that you have Boudica’s doll. So. What do you two need to say to each other?”

“Sorry I splashed you.” Boudica mumbled, looking at Sacha without meeting his eyes. And in turn, Sasha looked away as he stuck his arm out with the doll so she could take it back.

“Sorry I took your doll.”

 

“They were well-behaved last night.” Danel Rusla announced as he strolled into the house through the still open front door. The Knight flinched at how comfortable he was inside Bezel’s home, and then he looked back and forth between a man he’d once called friend and the boy and the girl who had dark hair just as he did. A gut-wrenching thought began to settle into place, and he looked to Bezel, who was walking over to young Boudica. “I should have known it wouldn’t last. I would say you were entirely to blame, boy, if I didn’t know Boudi was just as much trouble as you are.”

“Sorry, papa.” Sasha apologized, more sincerely than he had to Boudica, and Danel Rusla laughed and rubbed his young boy’s head. 

By then, Bezel knelt down beside Boudica, who rubbed at her eyes for a moment before squirming out of her mother’s hug and stared at the Knight with wide and curious eyes. It took the Knight’s breath away. One eye, blindingly green just like her mother’s, and the other eye a harrowing stormcloud blue. 

“Mama?” Boudica asked unsurely, still staring at the poleaxed Knight. “Who’s this?”

The sharp inhalation of air from Bezel as she turned her head back to the Knight tore him apart even more. “This is…” Bezel stammered, then recovered, saying, “This is an old friend of mine.”

“He’s a Mage Knight.” Sasha exclaimed, looking at the Knight with far more suspicion. “What’s he doing here? He’s from Atlantis. Why’s there someone from Atlantis here?”

“He is part of the delegation from Atlantis, Sacha. I’ve spoken to you of this.” Danel admonished him. “And there was a time that we were very good friends.”

Boudica gaped and looked between the Knight and her mother. “You were friends with my mama?”

The Knight closed his eyes and felt the pain in his chest increase. Ever since he saw her yesterday, all he’d been able to think about was getting her back. He should have known better.

_ Don’t get angry over the things you can’t change, my precious one. _

 

“I was.” The Knight replied, opening his eyes back up as he looked down at little Boudica, a girl with all of her mother’s intelligence and curiosity, but with long dark hair that matched Danel’s. He glanced at Danel briefly, next to his son Sacha, and then let his eyes flicker over to Bezel, who was stricken by the leaden weight in his answer. “A long time ago.”

He reached for the cloth napkin next to his half-finished plate and wiped his hands, then mustered a smile he didn’t feel. “I should let you spend some time with your family.”

“No, you…”

“I’ll see you at the meeting later today.” He cut her off, and walked past the woman he still loved and could never have, and her daughter, and Danel, and…

He was out of the house and halfway down the street when Bezel came running out after him, calling his name. The Knight almost didn’t turn around. He did, though, and waited as she caught up to him, breathing shallowly with her eyes full of pain.

“You don’t understand.” Bezel said, “Boudica’s…”

“I understand perfectly.” The Knight cut her off, slashing a hand in the air between them while his rage burned bright under cold words. “You moved on. That’s fine. But you should have told me last night.” She made a choking noise, staring at him with hurt in her emerald eyes. “How old is she, Bezel? How old is Sacha? Eight? Nine?” He hurt, and he wanted the words to hurt, and so he untapped the poison burning in his chest and let it flow. “How long did you wait before jumping into Danel’s bed? I should have known. We investigated him for being someone you might have gone to for help. He would have had trouble hiding a friend. But there’s no length he wouldn’t have gone to for a girl who let him put a child in her belly.”

Bezel stumbled back, pale and betrayed, and she put a hand over her mouth. The Knight was struck with a sudden urge to fall to his knees and apologize and beg her forgiveness.

No. No, he wouldn’t do that. He was a Mage Knight of Atlantis, and the time of youthful dreams and indiscretions were long behind him. He lived in the real world now. She had moved on, and he’d been a fool to think she wouldn’t. All that he had left to him now was his pride, wounded as it was.

_ Don’t let them see them getting to you. _

So he turned around and walked away. And this time, Bezel didn’t follow him.

 

***

 

The people of Lux gave the Knight looks that ranged from curious to hostile as he trudged through the city streets and slowly made his way to the inn where the Atlantean delegation had been placed. Nobody approached him or tried anything, but he certainly felt unwelcome. It had been different when he’d been with Bezel the night before. They hadn’t known him, but  _ everyone _ had known her. And they trusted her enough to accept his presence, Mage Knight or no. Her absence had shifted everything to a darker shade. 

The Knight should have known better. He’d been fooling himself to think that he’d ever be welcome in Logos.

The Atlantean delegation was housed in a two story affair of a stone foundation and wood everywhere else with windows covered by wooden slats in place of glass, and the Knight would have declared it abundantly comfortable at any other time. It was an inn by the looks of it, and one that had been reserved solely for their use. That was likely a point in their favor, because the Knight suspected that Viscount Barnaval would have been completely able to upset any poor Logosian who crossed his path. As soon as he opened the door and ventured inside, the noble’s grating voice started to pick away at what little patience he had left.

“No, no, no you simpleton! I said I wanted four-minute poached eggs, not four one-minute poached eggs!” He snapped at the server, who stammered out a hasty apology with more than a little outrage and went off into the kitchen to remake the order. The Knight watched him go, then watched with an inner flinch as Barnaval dumped the eggs into the remains of his cooked oats and pushed the mess away from him. The Knight was not so removed from his childhood and the lean years that it didn’t affect him. He remembered the gnawing ache of an empty belly, and here was someone who had taken valuable food and ruined it.

Barnaval scowled at the remains of his breakfast a bit more, and then shifted his eyes up onto the Knight. “And here you are at last, crawling in not half an hour before we’re due to depart for the second day of this farcical conference. Honestly, you look as though you’ve been out all night, you look positively horrible. You could at least splash some water on your face so you don’t embarrass the rest of us.”

“Fine, sir.” The Knight said woodenly, and started for the stairs that led up to the bedrooms. He didn’t know which one had been meant for him, but he planned to find an empty one and then wet his hair back, at the least. He only made it five steps before Barnaval called his name again, and after a moment of tensed up shoulders, he turned, keeping his face a mask.

“I hope that your complete absence from our group last night is an indication that you learned something useful? Such as how Princess Bezel is still alive, or how she went unnoticed? And what did you learn about the powerful artifact that Logos supposedly has?”

Maybe the Knight would have told Barnaval nothing if he hadn’t been so heartbroken and bitter. Maybe he would have kept Bezel’s secrets if he didn’t feel betrayed at Bezel having a daughter. At having a  _ family _ that he wasn’t a part of. But he was bitter, and he did feel betrayed.

“I couldn’t tell you how Bezel escaped the notice of all the search parties who were sent out after her over the years.” He told Barnaval grimly, “But I do know about the Artifact that Logos has put their faith in. Only it’s not one artifact. It’s six.”

Barnaval breathed in slowly and folded his hands together, then leaned forward over the dining table with a hard stare. “And what are these six artifacts?”

“They’re Charms. Powerful, singular charms on brown carved stone that can’t be reproduced.” The Knight went on, and snorted. “And they’re not a threat at all, not where they are.”

“Where are they, then?”

“Around the neck of the only person in Logos who would never use them as a weapon. The person who made them.” The Knight mused. Perhaps he could salvage the mess. Ensure that Barnaval understood there was no threat at all.  “They’re with Bezel. They’re  _ her _ Charms.”

 

***

 

They reached the civic building slightly before the designated time, and the Knight had smoothed back his hair and tossed on a fresh shirt to look presentable. He didn’t adhere to the Viscount’s habit of being immaculately pristine at every waking hour, but then the Viscount was a man who clearly had never done a hard day’s work in his life. 

There was water and glasses waiting for them on the table when they were escorted into the conference room, and they had all of five minutes to themselves before the door on the opposite side of the room opened up to admit Deakin Validus and the rest of the Logosian party. Most of it, anyways. The Knight started when the door closed and there was no sign of Bezel. But Danel was there.

Danel’s face was masked, but his eyes were hard as he looked back at the Knight. 

“Good morning.” Validus greeted the Atlantean ambassador politely. The tension Danel carried was completely absent from the First Speaker of Logos. “I trust that you slept well last night.”

“Barely.” Viscount Barnaval sniffed, either intentionally being a prat or crashing into it headfirst because of his status in Atlantis. “The quarters given to us felt like a run-down hovel and the servants were utterly useless, but I did sleep.”

Validus’s smile became a little more strained finally. “I’m sorry to hear that. Perhaps we should try to conclude our business as quickly as possible so that you can return to your home and your creature comforts. There is one misconception you’ve been laboring under, though.”

“Oh, and what is that?” Barnaval asked impolitely. 

“The inn we rented out for the use of you and your security detail is privately owned.” Validus pointed out. “We have no servants. And they would be well within their rights to refuse service if you were to continue to be rude to them.”

“Oh, would we receive better quarters, then?” Barnaval brightened up.

“No.” Danel Rusla cut in with a growl. “You would be sleeping in the streets, Atlantean.”

Those weren’t idle words, and the Knight knew it. Things were different in Logos. Barnaval gaped at them.

“I will make a formal apology to the inn’s owners on behalf of our delegation.” The Knight said stiffly. “And the Viscount will...temper his remarks in the future.”

“Yes. I think that would be wise.” Validus nodded, his graying blond hair tipping a bit. Barnaval hummed and made a gesture with his hand, an apology in everything but the words or the actual sentiment. 

“Well. Before we get started, I’m curious. Your delegation is missing someone that was here yesterday.” Barnaval said, and tapped a finger on the table. “Where is her royal highness Bezel Lantea? I was hoping to speak more with her.”

Validus paused. “Where Bezel is, is her own business. She is a private citizen and she is under no obligation to participate in these talks.”

“Atlantis, you understand, would like to see its lost princess returned to the fold.”

“And as I understand it, having spoken with her many times over the years, she has  _ no interest _ in going back.” Validus said sternly. “She was never your princess, Barnaval, not really. She is  _ ours. _ She cares for us and has given us a path forward. This is her home now, and we have lawkeepers who will protect her if the Mage King thinks he can demand her return by force.”

Barnaval’s mouth twisted up in dissatisfaction. “I see. I will...pass that along, of course. We only wish the best for Bezel Lantea, and if she feels that...she is better off here, then Atlantis will  _ adapt _ to her desires.”

“Wise of you.” Validus said, a touch more relaxed. 

“I should still like to see her before we leave. To wish her well, at the very least, and to give her the opportunity to pass along any messages to the Mage King and her brother Jorran if she so wishes.”

“I will let her know, of course. But for now, she feels that her presence in our discussions of separating Atlantean authority from Logosian lands would be detrimental.” The First Speaker said, steepling his fingers. “Now, then. Perhaps we can pick up where we left off yesterday. Have you communicated with the Mage Knight leadership, and how soon can the units still stationed in Logosian territory be redeployed elsewhere?”

Barnaval and Validus fell into a familiar cadence of bickering and arguments and counter-arguments, but the Knight’s focus was on the empty chair opposite him where Artificer Able, Bezel Lantea,  _ Bezel Aibulwalt _ had been sitting yesterday. No, Validus may have given a good reason for her absence from the proceedings, but it wasn’t the real reason. Danel’s hard gaze on him made that all too clear.

She wanted nothing more to do with him. He should have been happy with that. He found himself seething in his skin.

 

***

 

The meeting of the second day went far longer than their first one had, and they no longer had the shock of Bezel’s return from the dead to make Viscount Barnaval reel and founder. The Logosian party and Barnaval argued at length over so many topics, from the start of a possible trade agreement between Atlantis and Logos, emigration and immigration, the newfound autonomy of Logos without interference from Atlantean military authority and oversight…

It was all so much  _ noise _ to the Knight, save for the parts related to the Mage Knights being forbidden from operating within territories that were now Logosian, or  _ which would one day become part of Logos also. _ The way First Speaker Validus talked, he expected that much of Terra would do the same, and that Atlantis’s days were numbered. The frustrating part was that he wasn’t entirely wrong. There were plenty of problems in Atlantis, mainly tied up with its poor leadership of entitled nobles who saw their authority as simply their due, rather than the responsibility it was. That had led to corruption, and that, the Knight had been more than willing to fight against. He  _ had _ fought against it, at Bezel’s side and at her command.

But Validus, for all of his sweet-sounding words was wrong about so much else. He thought that the world could survive without Atlantis? That it would be better off without it? Logos did not believe that strength should be the measure of rulership, and that the very basis of Atlantean society was wrong and doomed to failure. 

The Knight could think of a hundred different things that could go wrong if Atlantis and its Mage Knights were to fall. But then, he’d seen more than most. What did Validus know of the creatures from the stars, like the Surgalans or the dozen other beasts he’d personally fought that sometimes tried to sneak onto Terra? What did Validus or Danel Rusla know of the  _ utter horrors _ that came from the Void?

But he was not a  _ participant _ in the discussions, as Barnaval had snapped at him after the second time he’d tried to offer a comment. He had been forced to close his mouth and seethe and listen as Validus and Barnaval and Danel and the others of Logos argued and postured and tried to establish what the world would look like next week, or in a month, or in a year. In the end, Logos got almost everything that they wanted and Atlantis saw only a pittance of good fortune from the discussion. Logos did not need Atlantis, Validus had said. The Knight disagreed. There would always be a need for Terra’s powerful protectors, its Mage Knights. In time, as Logos struggled to hold on to order and prosperity while they faced challenges from within and threats from without, they would beg for the aid of Atlantis.

Atlantis had cracks, but it was still the sword and shield of Terra. Logos was deluding itself if it thought that it could rule without power held in the hands of the strong, hands that could guide humanity forward.

 

There were, perhaps, two or three hours of sunlight left in the day when First Speaker Validus rose up to his feet with a long sigh and a weary smile. “I believe that we have reached an agreement on the major points. We will have a draft of our articles of independence drawn up and ready for tomorrow. One copy will be kept here after it is signed and the other will go back to Atlantis with you, Ambassador Barnaval.”

“I doubt that many in Atlantis will be happy with this...new arrangement of things.” Barnaval said pointedly. “But. Things being what they are, I suppose that it is better than the alternative.”

Validus nodded. “Yes. It is. Why don’t we plan on our final meeting tomorrow at the noon hour? Something as momentous as Atlantis coming to terms with the independence of Logos is deserving of a proper meal, and I would hate to think that we were poor hosts.”

“Something small, I think.” Barnaval mused, looking up at the ceiling as he rubbed at his chin.

“Small? I would have thought you’d want something more opulent? With more people on hand to bear witness to it?”

Barnaval laughed softly. “Ordinarily, yes. But I’m not so naive to think that the Logosians at large approve of us. No. A quiet ceremony and a meal seems more appropriate. I may even bring a bottle of wine.”

“Until tomorrow then.” Validus said, extending a hand. Barnaval looked at it for a long second before standing up and clasping it, and the two older men shook. The Logosian party departed, and the Viscount and the Knight left as well, with Barnaval slipping in next to the rest of the security detail.

“Lieutenant.” Barnaval said, once they were outside of the building and out on the streets. The Knight jumped a little at his rank being called, and looked over. Barnaval’s amusement, small as it was, had disappeared. “You have been remarkably out of sorts since yesterday. I had thought that perhaps you were focused on the mission after you got back this morning, but clearly that isn’t the case. Where is your head at, anyways? Still thinking about Bezel?”

_ Always. _

“No, Viscount.” The Knight lied. 

“Oh, please. You still carry a magelight for her.” Barnaval rolled his eyes. “Unbelievable. I had thought that all the stories of ‘Bezel’s Knight’ were just fanciful rumor and gossip, but it seems that not all of them were. Honestly. Be thankful that she ran away and falsified her demise when she did, boy. In what world would you have ever been allowed to love a Princess of the blood?” 

_ Not in Atlantis, _ the Knight thought to himself, and forced himself not to look away from Barnaval’s snarl. 

“You’re no good to me as you are now.” Barnaval declared. “Clear your head. Go for a walk. When you report back to our residence tonight, I expect you to be in a fit state of mind to serve Atlantis as a Mage Knight.” The Knight found he had nothing to say to that, and so Barnaval and the rest of the security detail continued on, leaving the Knight standing alone in the street.

Some minutes later, his head still thrumming with everything he was feeling, the Knight turned and started walking. To where, he had no idea.

 

***

 

The problem with wandering aimlessly was that it tended to get a person lost. Without Bezel to act as his guide, the Knight, lost in his thoughts, quickly got turned around and ended up in an unfamiliar market. One that he’d never been in, that Bezel had never taken him to. A market with people that stared at him, a Mage Knight in his armor, and didn’t greet him out of gratitude or even fearful respect, but seething fury.  He tried to bargain for a meal, and was told in brusque words that they were fresh out, even though there were meats frying on a grill right in front of him. He asked how to reach the inn that the Atlantean delegation was staying at and was told it was back the way he’d come. 

He wasn’t made to feel welcome because he wasn’t welcome. It didn’t matter that none of them could hold a candle to his strength, or that he was a seasoned Mage Knight. He was of Atlantis, and they wanted no part of that in their midst. Not in the heart of Logos. 

Hungry and angry and tired, the Knight turned around and tried to retrace his steps. He forewent magical augmentation and the bursts of speed that could have quickened his journey, not wanting to give the Logosians a reason to panic and summon the lawkeepers. Though well-intentioned, he found himself regretting the move a few blocks later, when a small group of perhaps half a dozen men moved out into the street and blocked his path. Logosians, clearly, and only one of them carried an actual weapon in the form of a spear. The others only had wooden cudgels, which might have come from the spokes of wagon wheels or the handles of brooms.

The Knight breathed in and out as they cut off his escape and circled around him. “You should reconsider what you’re about to do here.” He told them, as he clenched his fists.

“You shouldn’t have come here, Atlantean.” The oldest of them ground out, and the Knight cocked his head to the side as he listened. There was more than anger in the man’s voice. There was pain, and grief.

“I am part of an official delegation from Atlantis, meeting with your leaders.” The Knight tried to calm them down. “I mean you no harm and I want no trouble. I am lost, and trying to find my way back.”

“We could send you home. In a box.” Another Logosian sneered. 

The Knight didn’t move as he re-evaluated them. Words weren’t working on them. Maybe they had a good reason for their anger. Maybe they had lost friends and family. Maybe some of them had suffered under a corrupt noble, like the people of Ganarus Province had. 

“Words can be taken back. Broken bones can’t.” The Knight said to them, and allowed the gleam of his aura to shine thinly around him. Not a flaring torch, but a gentle layer of warning, and they all took a definite step backwards once they saw that he commanded a blue aura. “I am a Mage Knight, charged with defending Terra from the threats on it and from beyond it. I have no quarrel with any of you. You are Logosian and do not fall under my authority. I have been trained to defend myself. Ask yourselves; are your vendettas worth risking your life over?”

It was one last bid at civility, when the Knight had absolutely no interest in  _ being _ civil. He wanted them to try and do something stupid, and in fact was counting on it. They had the same desperate look about them like all the other thugs and criminals throughout his life who’d had no qualms about risking their own necks. Not when they were so compelled to cause death and pain for the hurts they felt, real or imagined.

They closed in on him with flaring auras of red and orange, and the Knight moved into a familiar stance, leaving his sword in its scabbard. They must have been expecting him to draw it, must have thought that he would have cut them down. Perhaps they thought him weak, or merciful. It couldn’t have been farther from the truth.

It wasn’t their deaths that he wanted, it was their suffering, and he wasn’t fighting for the quick elimination. 

Five minutes later, the sounds of the fighting and the alarms that must have been raised by the other Logosians in the area resulted in a squad of lawkeepers descending on the brawl with potent smoke grenades that muddled the Knight’s mind and made his grip on his power flutter away from him, which allowed them to pin him down and subdue him. So like the weapons that Danel and his brigands had used years before when they fought against the corrupt knights and the corrupt baron of Ganarus Province. As they bound him in manacles and carted him off, he looked back to the pile of broken thugs he’d left behind with concussions, broken bones and terrible bruising, and smiled regardless.

They’d wanted the chance to fight the lone, unguarded Atlantean wandering their streets, and he’d wanted to break things. Everyone got what they wanted, for once.

 

***

 

_ Lux Civil Detention Center _

_ Late Evening _

  
  


The jail was cleaner than any the Knight had ever observed. He’d never had cause to  _ be _ in one before, but from his recollections of the prison on Atlantis and especially from other jails Below, the one here in Lux was several steps above the usual amenities. There was even a bunk for prisoners to sit on instead of a pile of straw in the corner, and a light glowing in the ceiling that glowed with magic, but was like no magelight he’d ever seen before. 

He would have praised the scenery if he wasn’t feeling the few bruises he’d gotten from the fight and the lawkeeper’s takedown that had followed it, and after they’d written down his name and conjured up a still image of his face which they’d then somehow enspelled onto an arrest record (And that was  _ another _ astoundingly common use of magic that Atlantis lacked which Logos took for granted), they’d dropped him into his cell with a flask of water and his own thoughts to stew on. They didn’t leave his arms bound, but having felt the sting of their incapacitating smoke grenades, the Knight realized they didn’t feel the need to do so. 

The Knight could only account for perhaps one hour or two’s passing before he heard footsteps approaching his cell in the corridor outside of it. He wondered who it would be. Bezel, coming to scream at him? More lawkeepers to mete out punishment? Or perhaps another of the Atlanteans, sent to retrieve him?

Of all the people that could have visited him in his captivity, it was Danel Rusla that the Knight wanted to see the least. Of course it would be ‘The Wolf’ who would show up. That disappointment matched with everything else in his life, really. And Danel had disappointment to spare, with how he stood on the other side of the bars with his arms folded. He even had the Knight’s sword hanging from his waist.

“So. You do have a touch of civility after all. After that little display of yours, I half thought I’d get here and see you trying to fight your way out. It’s not as though this jail could hold you, if you were truly hellbent on getting away.”

“I’ve civility enough to not cave your face in, Rusla.” The Knight countered. “Though Mana knows you deserve it.”

“I deserve it?” Danel countered, raising an eyebrow. “I’m not the one who broke Bezel’s heart. That was all you. It seems all you’re good for is breaking things. Including our citizens. Were you trying to declare war? Just venting your aggressions on Logosians for the hell of it?”

“I didn’t start that fight, Danel. I just  _ finished _ it.” The Knight countered, smiling darkly. “And perhaps you should get your facts straight before you go off calling me a warmonger. I told them I wanted no trouble and they still came after me. I tried to walk away and they cut off my retreat. You and Validus hold up Logos as this place of peace and prosperity, but I know better. You’ve added a fresh coat of paint, but underneath, the timbers of your house are as rotten as ever. There are some people who will always be angry enough and  _ stupid enough _ to go spoiling for a fight that they can’t win. And they won’t care who they hurt in the process.” The Knight shook his head, and felt the familiar hurt as he thought of his mother, dead because of a band of insurgents in Banali City. “This time, they weren’t attacking unarmed women and children.”

It made Danel flinch momentarily, but he shook it off and quickly recovered. “Funny. You talk about them being angry enough not to care who gets hurt. I could say the same thing about you. You didn’t kill those men, but you left them in terrible shape. I’ve seen the first reports from the lawkeepers. They found you beating them long after they were unconscious. Don’t try to hold yourself up as a model of  _ restraint. _ Were you anyone else, you would be staring down a sentence of  _ years _ in prison.”

“Were I anyone else?” The Knight questioned, raising an eyebrow. Danel bared his teeth as he clenched them.

“The Viscount was notified. He’s claimed that the matter of punishment lays with Atlantis, and not with Logos. You get to walk out of here, you smug son of a bitch. You’re a Mage Knight, trained to fight and to kill, and those men never stood a chance and you know it. You could have disarmed them and sent them packing with a few lumps and hurt feelings. But it’s not what you did.”

“I suppose you and I have different ideas when it comes to who deserves mercy.” The Knight replied coldly. “I wonder if you would have cared as much were they Atlanteans who were beaten by Logosian warriors.”

 

Danel and the Knight kept staring each other down, and it lasted for long, long seconds before Danel’s scowl deepened and he turned away. “I don’t understand what she saw in you. You’re nothing but a brute and a thug. Do you have any idea how special she is? Just how many miracles she’s pulled off? How many she’s  _ still _ making possible? She’s in an entirely different world from you.”

“She was a princess and I was her Knight. We’ve always been in different worlds.”

“No. She’s never cared about  _ caste, _ you fool. All the years you spent with her, and you never saw that? No. You see the world and only notice its flaws. She looks at the world and sees what it can be.”

More footsteps approached, and Danel drew in a breath before exhaling it slowly. “You don’t deserve her. But you’re not her problem anymore. She doesn’t want to see you again after this.”

That declaration came like a punch to the gut, and it was topped off when the sour-faced Viscount Barnaval appeared outside his cell next.

“You have a knack for causing trouble, lieutenant.” Barnaval growled out. “That will be remedied when we return home.” The Atlantean noble looked over to Danel. “I can assure you, he will  _ not _ have the chance to do this again.”

“See to it.” Danel said. “He’s banned from Logosian territory. After tomorrow’s ceremony, the ruling council wants him gone.”

“This does put a damper on what I’d hoped for.” The Viscount sighed. “What did Bezel think of my request for her presence? I should like to share a drink with her along with the rest of your delegation, and try to end this  _ visit _ on something of a high note.”

“The Artificer has considered the matter, and she has tentatively agreed. But her presence is contingent on the lack of  _ his.” _ Danel explained, and Barnaval nodded swiftly.

“You will see no more of him after this, if that is her highness’s wish.” The Viscount declared. 

Danel gave one sharp nod and then pulled out a key. With quick movements, he unlocked the cell and pulled the door open, and the Knight stepped outside, then turned to Danel and held out his hand. Danel scoffed and removed the Knight’s sword from his belt, but he handed it off to Barnaval.

“For the rest of your  _ limited _ time in the city of Lux, you are forbidden from carrying a weapon.” Danel told him. “The ambassador will return it to you once you are out of the city.”

“You do realize that I never drew my sword tonight.” The Knight pointed out bitterly.

“That is the only reason you are being allowed to leave.” Danel shot back. “You stay away from Bezel. You stay away from us. She’s not yours anymore.”

“So she’s yours then?” The Knight snapped back, and the bitterness and the hurt came back doubled. The strange and twisted smile that Danel gave him, full of sadness, left him a little disoriented. 

Danel shook his head and refused to answer. “He’s your problem now, ambassador.”

“Viscount.” Barnaval muttered sullenly, and turned away. “Come along, lieutenant.” 

The walk back to their quarters seemed to last forever, with Barnaval refusing to shut up once they’d gone three blocks out of the jail. The Knight tuned the man out and focused instead on his sword that was kept out of his hands, and all of his interactions with Bezel over the last two days. Her smiles. Her laughter. Her tears. He’d hurt her. She’d hurt him. But he would have preferred the sharp pain of her green eyes over the flat words of Danel Rusla, the father of her children, telling him to never come back again because she never wanted to see him again.

The Knight found himself wanting to go to her, to fall at her feet and apologize and beg for her forgiveness. And he hated himself for that weakness.

 

***

 

_ The Logosian Capital City of Lux _

_ Skyship Docks, City’s Western Border _

_ Midday _

 

The Knight had seen the city’s wonders and he had seen its ugliness as well. He felt every conceivable emotion in the span of two days, and now on the third day of the visit to Lux, he felt nothing but a bone deep weariness and a mixture of pride and guilt that he couldn’t reconcile. Mana help him, he still wanted Bezel. He had thought she still wanted him, but…

But all along, it must have been some strange plot on her part to ease concessions out of him, perhaps to get him to try and temper or control Barnaval to Lux’s advantage. Small wonder that she’d kept Sacha and Boudica away from home. That was a part of her life that didn’t tie into the fantasy of her life that she had showed to him.

Artificer. Sage. Innovator. Mentor. 

_ Mother. _

And all of it had happened in his absence. He would leave after this, banned from ever returning, and her life would go on. Bezel would keep making wonders. She would raise her children. And Danel...Sacha’s father,  _ Boudica’s _ father…

 

He drew a glove over his mouth and chin and dismissed the thought. No. That part of his life was done now. It was enough to make him laugh a little at the bitter irony. Within the 242nd RRD, most considered him the most likely lieutenant to succeed Knight Commander Sloane when the old battleaxe retired. Sloane, who had joined up and buried himself in the work of being a Mage Knight on the front lines of defending Terra when the love of his life was taken from him. 

“History repeating itself.” The Knight said softly, and went back to checking over the Atlantean skyship that they’d landed in. Right now, Viscount Barnaval was no doubt making an ass of himself and trying to salvage as much favor as he could with the Logosian leaders on behalf of Atlantis. Even before the rabble had tried to attack the Knight and he’d defended himself and caused an incident in the process, it had been clear to the Knight that Validus and his council felt they were capable of full independence. Whatever Barnaval was hoping to achieve, it wouldn’t amount to anything in the short term. Logos had declared independence, and short of a war to beat them down and bring them into the fold again, the Knight didn’t see that decision being reversed. Especially not when Bezel commanded the powers within her Charms. He didn’t want a war, either. Better for them to see the folly of their decision to go it alone without the protection of Atlantis, suffer, and come back chastened and humble. Better that than the alternative. 

He jerked his head up at the sound of an alarm sounding deep within the heart of the city. It was high and piercing and unlike any other sound that Lux made, and the one Logosian working in the skyship docks jerked his head up as well with an open frown. 

“What does that mean?!” He shouted out to the dock-worker, moving to the ship’s railing to get their attention.

“Trouble!” The man yelled back, and there was suspicion in his eyes as he looked the Knight over. That sense of paranoia was enough to make the Knight grunt and roll his eyes, until the man looked away, satisfied that the Knight was not the culprit in question. Neither of them quite knew what to make of it, and the man took off running, leaving the Knight alone on the skyship he’d been relegated to watching because of the terms of his release. Something was happening in Lux. People might be in danger. People might already be hurt. It was a good ten seconds of him thinking about what trouble was happening in the city before he remembered that these weren’t his people to protect any longer. And that he didn’t have a weapon. It made for a long ten seconds, and afterwards he felt ashamed and then bitter all over again.

One of the hovering land vehicles the Logosians used came humming around a street corner from the outskirts and flew straight for the docks. The Knight stood a little taller and narrowed his eyes as it drew nearer, picking out Viscount Barnaval riding in the front with one of the other knights driving, and a second in the back. Of the other two knights who had been part of the Viscount’s security detail, though...there was no sign. And as they got nearer, the Knight could see that Barnaval was flushed from exertion and the other two knights looked battered and hurt. And Barnaval was clutching a small bag of something as though his life depended on it. 

The ground-hugging skyskiff came to a stop three lengths from their skyship and Barnaval wasted no time in clambering out of it, with the three knights glancing back behind them worriedly.

“Time to go.” Barnaval said, his hands shaking and his face pale. “Is the ship ready for departure, lieutenant?”

“Yes?” The Knight answered carefully, staring at the Viscount and the three knights. “Where are the other two?”

“Not important.” The Viscount said, and his aura, a sickly yellow-green, flared out briefly as he turned his head back towards Lux and the alarms that were still sounding. One of the three knights with him tried to come on board, but the Knight stood at the top of the ramp and barred the way.

“We’re not leaving our people behind, Viscount. That’s not how the Mage Knights operate. Now, where are they?!” He demanded, more forcefully than before.

The Viscount hissed and the knight on the boarding ramp looked between them, unsure of what to do. The Viscount broke first. “They’re dead. You needn’t concern yourself with corpses.”

“What?!” The Knight recoiled, and the underling who’d been on the gangplank pushed by him with a grumble. The Knight gave him a sour look before turning back to Barnaval, still clutching his bag tightly as he started for the boarding ramp himself. “What in blazes is going on? What happened? Why are the city’s alarms…”

The Knight’s mind, already racing, finally took everything into account.

Two dead members of Barnaval’s security detail. A city on alert. None of the rest of the Logosian party able to meet his eyes, and Barnaval pale and trembling as he kept looking behind them like he expected to be chased, and…

“What did you  _ do?” _ The Knight demanded lowly, barring Barnaval’s path. 

“Damn your eyes, let me board!” Barnaval declared, more panicked than angry. “We have to leave, now!”

_ “What _ did you  _ do?!” _ The Knight repeated, shouting at the Viscount, and no longer caring how insubordinate he was in ignoring the order and confronting the older noble. 

“What I was ordered to!” Barnaval shouted at him, and tried to push his way past the Knight to get on board the skyship. He failed to account for how solid his lieutenant truly was and bounced off of his shoulder, tumbling back. The Knight grabbed his arm and pulled, and the Viscount tumbled haplessly onto the deck of the skyship. He lost control of his bag and it crashed onto the wooden planks, spilling open and sending its contents rolling out for all to see.

The Knight had been panicking before, but at the sight of the five tan brown stones with the dark black engraved runes over their surface that flew out of the bag, it all froze into a moment of utter clarity. He knew those st...those Charms. Merciful Mana. The Charms.

Bezel’s Charms.

 

“No!” Barnaval cried out, and grabbed for them. He got one of the Charms in his grubby mitts before the Knight was on him, and the Knight picked the man up and slammed his back against the ship’s rail. As Barnaval gasped in pain, the Knight pinned him down with one hand closed tight on the noble’s throat.

“What. Did. You.  **Do?!”** The Knight repeated, screaming inside of his head. Bezel’s Charms. His worst fears burning in his mind, he could guess exactly what the Viscount had done. With two soldiers dead, and Bezel’s Charms in his possession…

Barnaval was choking on the limited air he could breathe in through the Knight’s clenched fingers, and there was a flicker of movement down at his side that the Knight felt and ignored, knowing that Barnaval hadn’t been carrying any weapons.

It cost him when he heard a spark that came out of nowhere, giving him just enough warning to flare up his aura in a full-body shield, and then he was thrown backwards by a blast of lightning from Barnaval’s palm pressed against his gut. Even with the hasty ward of protection, he was sent flying and his body twitched and seized out of control while he tasted a thunderstorm in his mouth.

_ The Charm of Stormsfire, _ the part of his brain that wasn’t screaming from pain and the white-hot flare through his nerves placed as he fell to the deck and skidded backwards from the force of the blow. He’d been hit by spells of lightning before, by the strange debilitating energy weapons that the creatures from the stars sometimes used. The power that the Charm of Stormsfire carried felt so much worse, and were he any less powerful, it probably would have killed him outright instead of laying him out as a boneless heap.

When he came back to himself, Barnaval was wheezing and laughing as he gathered up the rest of the Charms and placed them along the sleeves that covered his forearms. “Such power, in such a little thing.” One by one, the Charms gleamed briefly as they stuck to his clothes, flaring in a way that made the horror of the moment all too real. The Knight kept screaming in his head as he struggled to push himself back up to his knees. Barnaval had five of them. Five. The sixth of her Charms, and the Heartstone, those were absent. He didn’t have them all. But for him to be holding five…

“You killed her.” The Knight croaked out. 

“Hm?” Barnaval mused, his attention flickering back to the Knight. “Oh. Yes. In a way, I have to thank you for your little dust-up the night before.”

_ What? _

“Honestly, I don’t think that we could have taken them and made off with Bezel’s Charms in a fair fight. And I certainly couldn’t have managed it if you were there, making moon-eyes at her like you were still her guardian. Your absence made her presence possible. And such a mess you made, why, nobody batted an eye when I brought that bottle of wine as a face-saving measure. None of them ever stopped to consider that it might have been poisoned.” Barnaval stepped forward with his hands behind his back while the rest of the surviving Atlantean delegation came aboard, and the Knight stared at the Charms that he wore. He tried to remember the symbols that Bezel had showed him yesterday morning. Which ones did Barnaval have? Stormsfire. Probability. Insight. Flames. Managrasp.

But not the Charm of Healing. Not the Heartstone. Why not those? 

Poisoned. The miserable bastard had  _ poisoned _ her. He grunted and came up to his feet, and one of the other knights was on him in an instant, pinning his arms behind his back.

“Stand down, lieutenant. I’m willing to ignore your insubordination this time.” Barnaval hummed. “It’s a near total success for our mission, really.”

“What mission?” The Knight wheezed, going slack in the other man’s arms. Let the soldier think him weak and debilitated. He was still hurting from that lightning blast, he didn’t have to falsify his reactions that much. He wanted to scream at Barnaval. He wanted to gut the miserable bastard. He’d killed Bezel!  _ He’d killed Bezel! _

Barnaval stared at him again. “Unbelievable. Are you really this addlepated? Atlantis cannot endure if the world decides to rebel against it. A statement had to be made. We have slain the Logosian leadership. And the great rumored Artifact that they meant to hide behind? It is ours now.” Barnaval breathed in deeply as the Charms glowed on his arms, flickering gold for a moment before the runes burned the same sickly yellow-green of the Viscount’s magic. “No...They are  _ mine.” _

“Not all of them.” The Knight forced out.

“True. As the light was going out of her eyes and I was tearing them from her body, two of the stones clung stubbornly to her. That red one she wore around her neck and the sixth Charm.” Barnaval mused. “But no matter. With five of them in my hands and their leadership gone, Logos will collapse. They wouldn’t dare stand up and try to resist the might of Atlantis now.” Barnaval’s eyes gleamed with unnatural light, matching the sickly red burn that came from the Charms he wore on his arms. “And it’s all thanks to you, lieutenant.” Barnaval grinned.

 

There was a moment of absolute stillness around the Knight then, when the pain from his injuries disappeared and the grief and the rage boiling inside of him combined with the sudden influx of  _ shame _ and transformed into something else. The Knight looked at Barnaval’s wild smile and his strange altered eyes and the unnatural glow of the stolen Charms down his sleeves. He felt the arms of the Mage Knight standing behind him, holding him back from taking a swing at Barnaval. 

In that singular moment, everything he felt disappeared, and the Knight felt his instincts drive him.

His blue aura burned to life in a blaze that scalded the air, and his scream was only beaten out by the unfortunate soldier holding him who found himself being burned alive. The soldier let go, and the Knight  _ moved. _

 

Viscount Barnaval carried no sword and possessed a weaker aura than the Knight. He had but one advantage, that of the Charms he had killed for, and the power within them. The Knight hadn’t seen Bezel use them in combat, but he had known better than to discount their power.

_ My fault, _ he thought as he lashed out at the thick shields Barnaval conjured up with the sword of the Mage Knight who had been holding him.  _ She’s dead and it’s my fault, she’s dead she’s dead SHE’S DEAD! _

“Treason! High treason!” Barnaval shrieked as the battle sent them flying from the deck of the skyship and into the docks. Incineration Blasts passed between them at a furious pace, the Knight dodging the Charm-augmented strikes of his less capable foe and the Viscount pulling on the stored power within the Charms and the mana in the living world around them to make his shields unbreakable. “You could have gone back home a hero for this!” It didn’t matter. None of it mattered now, the Knight knew. Bezel was dead. She was dead and her Charms had been stolen and sat in the hands of a madman who claimed to be following orders.

The Mage King’s orders. Under the guise of a diplomatic envoy, Barnaval and his men had been sent to discover the source of their confidence in their bid for independence. They had been sent to  _ weaken _ Logos for a conflict that would follow to pull them back into the fold. And the Knight had been their spy. The Knight had told the Viscount  _ exactly _ what Logos was counting on for its defense. The Viscount had told the Mage King. And the Mage King…

_ Mana, had he ordered the death of his own sister? _

 

“Enough!” Barnaval shouted, and he extended his hand out at the Knight behind his shield of mana, which glowed in time with another of the Charms. Insight?  _ “Drop your sword!” _

To the Knight’s dismay, against the wishes of his own mind, his body did just that right before it would have struck at Barnaval’s defenses again. Barnaval gasped for air and looked between the blade and the Knight and his open palm, and then laughed incredulously. He swung his arm out in a wide arc at the Knight as another Charm -  _ Managrasp _ \- glowed the same sickly yellow-green, and the Knight went flying, pressed up against the side of the skyship in the ruins of the docks.

The two undamaged royal knights who had kept their distance during the battle now closed in on them.

“Orders, sir?” The first asked Barnaval with a rasp.

“Make sure the ship is still skyworthy and then get us ready to take off.” Barnaval told them, never taking his eyes off of the Knight. “We’ve wasted enough time, and Atlantis is waiting for her prize. We will be well rewarded for this.” The two knights saluted and ran up onto the ship again. The Knight struggled uselessly against the grip of the Charm-augmented managrasp spell that Barnaval had him in, and stared back at the man through blurry eyes.

“Was it worth it?” The Viscount asked him coolly. “This one last, desperate act of misplaced aggression?”

“Was whatever reward you think Desmond will give to you worth the stain on your soul for this act of regicide?!” The Knight screamed back at him. “You killed her! You killed my…”

Barnaval’s eyes widened, and he stepped in closer. “Your what? Your princess? Your lover?” He paused, and a gleeful predatory smile appeared. “Oh ho...Don’t tell me. Really?” The Knight cried silently, and Barnaval laughed. “Oh, you deluded, lovesick fool. I should execute you here for your treason, and save you the punishment that the Mage King will inflict on you. Besides. Regicide? She was not my king, and she wasn’t a princess either. There was a funeral for her and everything, remember? My hands are clean. Yours, though?”

 

There was a flicker of light behind Barnaval, and the Knight’s eyes turned past the man to see a magical portal flaring into existence twenty paces behind him. And out of it…

**_“Leaving so soon?”_ ** Bezel asked coldly as she stepped through, one hand holding her familiar Arocan staff while the other gripped the hand of Danel Rusla who came through the portal behind her, a moment before it closed off and disappeared. The Knight all but slumped in relief. She was alive. She was alive, she was  _ alive. _ Her Heartstone glowed gold at her throat, and the only Charm that Barnaval had been unable to steal, the Charm of Healing, did the same along her collar. She looked unharmed but livid, and her eyes were red from crying.  **_“I think not,_ ** _ ambassador.” _

Barnaval spun around, agog and panicking. “You...you’re still alive?!”

“Not for lack of your trying.” Danel snarled, sweating and shaky, but alive. “You’ll burn for this, you miserable bastard. You’ll all burn.”

Barnaval laughed, lost in his little manic world. “You will try!” He declared and raised his arms towards them. “But I hold the power of the Charms now, girl! You don’t stand a chance against me, it’s five Charms against one and the miserable prototype on your throat!”

Bezel’s eyes flared a violet so dark that they almost went black, and she let go of Danel’s hand and pointed it at Barnaval. “They were never yours, Viscount.” She turned her hand over and beckoned with two fingers, and the Knight slumped to the ground as the spell pinning him to the side of the ship gave out. He watched in awe as the Charms separated from Barnaval’s sleeves and flew through the air to Bezel, settling back into place along the collar of her dress where they belonged.

“No!” Barnaval howled, running towards her and lashing out with wild blasts of his own, weaker magic. Bezel didn’t hold up a hand to block them, she didn’t have to. Her violent, violet aura swirled up around her and blunted every crazed strike as he closed in, and then Danel had moved in front of her and drew his sword…

Barnaval screamed in pain then, as his arm was separated from his body just above the elbow, and he crumpled to the ground. Bezel knelt down and placed her hand on his shoulder, and the bleeding stopped as she fed a spell of healing into the wound, enough to seal it and stem the blood loss. 

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” Danel growled down at the Viscount, who had descended into whimpering moans.

“What was asked of me.” The Viscount rasped. “Logos will  _ never _ be free.”

“And you declare war by killing us with poison.” Bezel uttered, her voice thick with tears. “Validus. Pinocot. Magodo. Our highest advisors.”

“How are you alive?” Barnaval wheezed, and the Knight got back up on his feet. “The poison...it should have…”

The smile Bezel gave him was too full of sadness to be anything but mixed. “You didn’t manage to get  _ all _ the Charms.” The smile, thin as it was, disappeared. “But I couldn’t save everyone. So congratulations,  _ Viscount. _ You’ve committed a capital offense. You won’t enjoy the sentence.”

“You won’t win.” Barnaval rasped, pain in his wild eyes. “Logos will never be free!”

Bezel wiped a hand over her eyes. “Get him out of here, Danel.”

“Will you…” Danel started to ask, but Bezel shook her head to stop him. “Very well.” The Logosian warrior hauled Barnaval up by his good arm and clubbed his fist against the back of the man’s skull, knocking him unconscious. 

 

The Knight started towards Bezel, and she whipped her head up and stared him down with a flare of power that made all six of the Charms and the Heartstone flare gold and bleed into her aura.  **“Stay back!”** She shouted at him. There was no strange impulse of command in it like there’d been in Barnaval’s words when he’d made the Knight drop his sword, but there was power enough in that scream to stop him regardless. The red of her eyes was renewed with fresh tears, and there was so much space between them. A vast chasm, where he wanted only to reach out and touch her, to hold her, to weep in gratitude that she still breathed.

Her chest heaving as she tried not to weep, Bezel stared at him and the Knight felt his tongue go mute.

“You just can’t help it, can you?” She choked out. The other two knights that had been on the ship emerged from the interior, let out a shout and moved to attack her, and she blasted them back with a pulse of power that laid them out cold but left no burns or marks save for the bruises they’d have when they woke up. The Knight stared at her dumbly as she sniffed and wiped at her eyes. “And I’m still the foolish girl who lets you into my heart, over and over again.”

“Bezel...I didn’t...I wasn’t part of…”

“Shut up.” She told him softly, and he did. “He knew. That miserable noble  _ knew _ about the Charms. He poisoned us, all of us, just to get at them. And I’ve told nobody from Atlantis about them. Nobody...but you. Was that your job? Seduce me, so that I’d open up and spill all my secrets?”

The Knight shook his head. “You don’t understand.”

“I don’t?” Bezel hummed, and her eyes glinted dangerously. “Funny. I said the same thing the morning after you seduced me, and you didn’t care. You didn’t listen. You  _ never _ listened to me when it was important. Only when it was convenient.”

She took a step back and he made to follow her, but her arms came up and pointed at him in fear and with pain glowing in her eyes. He stopped.

“I’m sorry.” He confessed. “This wasn’t supposed to happen. None of this was supposed to happen!”

“Validus is dead. Every member of the council who was there and took a drink from Barnaval’s wine is  _ dead. _ I couldn’t save them.”

“You saved Danel.” He said, and as torn up as he felt, it came out like an accusation.

Bezel shook her head. “Because in the seconds I had to make a decision...I realized I could never look at Sacha again if I let his father die. But you got what you wanted,  _ lieutenant. _ Logos is crippled. Atlantis knows about the Charms. And Atlantis has its war.”

The Knight’s eyes stung him again. “You’re declaring war on Atlantis? Bezel, you can’t…”

“I can’t.” Bezel interrupted him with a watery snort. “Danel, though? The rest of the leadership that survived the coup and your attempted theft?”

“You can talk him down. You don’t want a war, Bezel, believe me.” He urged her, panicking.

“I wanted so many things.” Bezel breathed, and smothered her silent sobs. Her hands clenched and unclenched. “But I’ll have this.” She blinked and stood a little taller, and her aura blazed to life around her. “You are banished from Logos. Take what’s left of your men and tell  _ my brothers _ that Logos is free, and we will defend ourselves. You tell Desmond that if he wants a war badly enough that he’ll send a messenger to kill us in a time of peace and rob me of what is mine, then he’d better start looking over his shoulder. And as for you?” She blinked rapidly, letting the tears run free as her voice thickened. “You stay away from me. Stay away from my daughter. Stay away from my family.”

Bezel took her extended hand and moved it in an enormous circle, chanting all the while, and the Knight found himself thinking back to ten years before, when she had left Atlantis through a strange portal fueled by her mana. 

There was a strange rushing sound like the ocean behind him, and he whirled about to see an absolutely  _ massive _ hole in the air form behind him and the unconscious Mage Knights and the skyship. On the other side of it he could see Portstand, the base camp of the 242nd RRD, five hundred yards off, a beacon of civilization in the wilderness of the Arocan prairie. 

“What?” He blurted out, agog at the sheer size of the portal she’d conjured up in moments, a portal that led to a place a continent away. He turned back to Bezel and made to speak, but her green eyes, still full of tears, went blindingly gold and he was paralyzed, held in place and unable to blink or to move his tongue or even twitch a finger. All he could do was breathe as all of Bezel’s Charms and her Heartstone burned the color of wealth and she made a gesture like she was pushing a door open.

The Knight, the other two, and the skyship were picked up effortlessly and thrown through the portal like polished skipping stones across a pond. He regained control of his body after he passed through the portal that tingled over his skin, and managed to tumble and roll to a rough landing. The skyship wasn’t so lucky, and splintered and broke apart into a pile of loose timbers and metal far behind him.

He brushed the dirt and the grass out of his wet eyes and turned his head towards the enormous portal, and saw Bezel on the other side of it, sinking to her knees and weeping.

“Bezel!” The Knight screamed, and raced for it, wanting to cross back over and go to her side. She raised a hand up and twisted her index and middle finger together in a snarled loop without looking, and the portal blurred and popped out of existence like a soap bubble. 

 

The Knight came to a stop an arm’s length from where it had stood and didn’t blink. If he blinked, his eyes would reset and he would see the Arocan landscape ahead of him instead of the sight that burned into his memory.

Bezel, kneeling in the ruins of the skyship docks in Lux, weeping for those who had died.

And those who were yet to die.

 

***

_ Portstand 242nd RRD Encampment _

_ Dalum Province, Aroca _

  
  


Atlantis had numbers and raw power on their side, but Logos knew more about artificing and runecrafting and the intricacies of mana-based invention than they did, and that point had been demonstrated very clearly when  _ every single Sending Stone _ possessed by the Atlantean military suddenly received and forcefully began playing a transmission on loop from Lux, detailing the treachery of the delegation sent to broker peace, how Logos was defending itself from the aggression of a corrupt government that  _ needed _ the rest of Terra to serve as second class citizens and slaves.

That transmission was still playing now, jamming up the Sending Stones and keeping the Atlantean military units from coordinating or calling back to Atlantis. It had forced them to revert back to the old and more inefficient means of mages skilled in Far-Sending magic, if they still had them. It hadn’t happened soon enough, though.

Entire squads of Mage Knights had deserted when that message went out. Not the corrupt ones. Not the ones known for their brutal methods, but the ones who had been sympathetic to the arguments made by the Logosian Adherents, and then Logos when that band of gadflies formed the small but growing power. Even the 242nd RRD had lost personnel.

The Knight sat in Knight Commander Sloane’s office with the blinds drawn and the image of a haggard Danel Rusla shining out from the Sending Stone kept there for the base commander’s official use.  _ “...know that there are those of you in the Mage Knights who would never have supported the means that the Mage King and the top command authority of Atlantis authorized. I know that there are those of you in the RRD, in the local garrisons, who don’t believe that all of Terra, which Atlantis mockingly calls  _ **_The Below,_ ** _ is worth less than a single floating island that circles the world and thinks it rules it. To those of you who believe that Atlantis has gone too far, for those who joined to  _ protect _ the world instead of subjugating it, I offer an open hand of invitation to join us in Logos, and to help us defend the only place of true freedom and prosperity on Terra. Atlantis lied to you about so many things, not least of all that Bezel had been killed by Adherent terrorists. And yet she lives here as a beacon of hope and inspiration…” _

“What I wouldn’t give for a way to shut that thing off.” Knight Commander Alastair Sloane grumbled loudly, storming into the room. 

The Knight nodded slowly, not looking up from his chair. Sloane walked around him to the more comfortable padded one reserved for his personal use and sank down onto it with an exhausted sigh. “We could always destroy it, sir.”

“We could. Of course, we might need it later. Once we figure out how Logos managed to jam them up.” Sloane said. They fell into companionable silence, and while he couldn’t stop the transmission, the Knight turned down the volume on the speakers until the image of Danel Rusla spoke as a soft whisper in the background.

“How many left to fight for Logos?” The Knight asked his superior, and in many ways, his oldest friend. “How much of the 242nd went to join Bezel?”

“Two-thirds.” Sloane said. “I’m surprised that more didn’t go. Couldn’t tell you how many knights we’ve lost from the other RRDs or local units in border territories, Atlantis is keeping a tight lid on that information. Not all that surprising, really.” Sloane hummed and smiled weakly. “Bad for morale if the troops found out just how many of their brothers and sisters thought they were fighting on the wrong side of a war.”

The Knight breathed out slowly. Two-thirds of his entire unit had gone to fight for Logos. To fight for Bezel. To fight for  _ their princess. _ Of course they would, few had worked in such close proximity to Bezel Lantea as the 242nd. No other unit knew how much she had cared, not just for them, but for the people that they had been charged to protect. She’d been a force of change, a whirlwind of power, and she had inspired loyalty to the crown more than her brothers, more than her  _ father _ ever had. They were expected to serve the crown in their oaths. What the 242nd had felt for Bezel went beyond duty, and went into true respect. 

“She...she talked about you, you know.” The Knight said, when the silence had dragged on long enough to feel wrong again. Sloane perked up at his news. “She wanted you to move to Lux after you retired. She wanted you to be in her life, so she could take care of you.” The flare of days-old hurt came back. “So you could meet her daughter.”

“The lass had a child, then? What was the little un’s name?” Sloane asked, and the longing ache brought out his Caultish accent. 

“Boudica.” The Knight said, and felt a pang of longing he couldn’t explain as he thought of the dark-haired girl with one green eye like her mother’s, and one that had been stormcloud blue. “Her name’s Boudica.”

 

Sloane nodded at the declaration and got up, moving over to the cabinet along the far wall. He pulled out two glasses and a decanter of distilled spirits that the Knight had only ever seen him reach for twice in three years. He poured out two liberal helpings, put the decanter back, and handed the second glass to the Knight. “To your health.”

“To yours.” The Knight replied, and they raised their glasses in salute after Sloane sat back down in his chair. He took a sip and let it burn down his throat as he swallowed, not breathing for several seconds to reduce the wheeze that it inspired. 

“This is going to be an ugly war.” Sloane said quietly, and he turned his chair halfway around, turning the wooden blinds until they were open partway to let in the afternoon light. “The Mage King and his brother the Supreme Commander believe that this fight with Logos will only take a few months and that it’ll be business as usual with some brutal crackdowns and occupations after.”

“But you don’t think that.” The Knight said. Sloane took another sip of his drink and shook his head slowly. “How long do you think this will last?”

“Years.” Sloane whispered. “Years, and tens upon tens of thousands dead. And none of us are going to understand the world we find ourselves standing in when the dust settles in the blood.”

“I loved her.” The Knight said brokenly. “I loved her, lost her, found her, and lost her all over again.”

Sloane barked out a laugh at that, one that cracked clean through to the grief always hidden underneath. “Loved? Boy, you can lie to yourself, but you can’t lie to me. You still love her.”

The Knight blinked, then closed his eyes. “Mana help me. Yes. I still do.” He went quiet, and Sloane drummed the fingers of his hand against his glass of alcohol for a while after.

“I never stopped loving her mother, either.” The old man said, lost somewhere in his memories. 

 

“Why didn’t you go with the others?” The Knight asked him. “Why didn’t you run to Bezel’s side? You promised her years ago you would if she asked you to.”

There came the sound of Sloane getting up from his chair, the noise of his boots shuffling around on the floor. It was when the Knight felt a hand come to rest on his knee that he opened his eyes, and saw Sloane kneeling on the ground, staring into his face. 

“She has friends in Logos still. She has family.” Alastair Sloane said. “But who do you have left in your life, boy?” His mouth quirked up into a smile. “What kind of a father would I be if I let you face this mess alone?”

The Knight’s eyes teared up again. “You’re  _ her _ adopted father.”

Sloane stood up and pulled him into an awkward hug. “I’m yours too, boy. I’ve been yours longer than I was hers.”

It was a moment of peace and solace that didn’t last nearly long enough. Peace never did, but it rarely broke apart so violently.

War had come to Terra.


End file.
